


from time to time a spark ignites between us

by smc_27



Series: short fics [2]
Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, a bunch of au drabbles, and some canon-ish au, some fully au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 54
Words: 80,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28591896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: high school au. prompt: “so bold, make them know that you’re with me”
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Series: short fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081244
Comments: 76
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> high school au. prompt: “so bold, make them know that you’re with me”

Harry sips his drink and tries hard to listen to whatever it is this Gordie kid is saying to him. But Allie’s across the room looking cute and laughing at something Cassandra says. He usually tries to do a pretty good job of not letting people notice when he’s looking at her, but it’s hard tonight when all he can think about is yesterday in her bedroom when there was no one else home and…

“You know?” Gordie asks, and Harry gulps down some scotch and nods. 

Allie’s drinking one of these shitty white wine coolers Gwen brought, and he sort of just really also likes the way she gets all pink in the cheeks after she’s had more than a half a drink. And he knows this, because the first two times she kissed him, it was before having a drink, and the next five were after. And that was three months ago, and they only do this thing - this thing that actually feels really damn good - when no one else is paying attention. 

Right now, at a party after the stupid play’s wrap, with just about everyone they know milling around here somewhere, they can’t do more than say hi to one another without someone thinking it’s weird.

Earlier, when he pressed a rose into her palm, thanked her for working behind the scenes to make him look good, and she’d said, “God, Harry, you don’t need my help to look good.”

(This is the one of the things he likes most about her. She isn’t afraid to just talk to him. She isn’t scared to say what’s on her mind. When it’s compliments for him, but that’s a bonus.)

She walks into the kitchen when he’s sitting at the breakfast bar in this stupid house he actually thinks is kind of ugly. He’s not drinking anymore, because he does have to drive home. Allie’s smiling at him and acts like she’s just reaching for some chips from the bowl in front of him. She doesn’t even like Cheetos. She told him one time they’re too messy and she hates the way they stain her fingernails. It should scare the shit out of him that he’s got all these random facts about her in his head. 

He sort of smiles at her. 

“Wanna get out of here?” she asks, and like, yeah, he does, but also there’s a big part of him that just wants to put his middle finger up to everyone and kiss her right here. 

So when he says, “Not really,” and she turns quickly to look at him, he figures he’s gotta say something, because he doesn’t want to piss her off. 

(Doesn’t want to hurt her feelings.) 

“What?”

He breathes out, smiles at her a little sadly. He knows she’s not ashamed to be seen with him, or anything stupid like that. It’s just complicated, with her sister and her friends who think he’s not good for her. He gets it, sort of, but he’s also annoyed that people think she can’t make her own choices. She’s annoyed by it, too. They’ve talked about it a lot, actually. And it’s not that he doesn’t get why she’s nervous. He does. 

He just just likes her enough now that he doesn’t want to keep doing this in secret, without knowing that they might actually…

He doesn’t know. Maybe he just wants to be with her. 

“We could go,” he says, to let her know he’s not doing something crazy like breaking up with her in front of all these people. Allie blinks at him. “Or you could kiss me right here.” 

Something flashes in her eyes, and he’s not sure if it’s fear or excitement. It’s not like they’ve never talked about it before, what it’d look like if they just said fuck it and went for it. They talk a lot. About a lot of things. 

“You think?” she asks quietly, sounding nervous. Harry nods, turns a bit so his knee’s brushing her leg. She smiles a little, takes a deep breath. “Why am I the one kissing you?”

Harry’s trying to stay calm, because he thinks they’re really doing this. She would’ve just said no and that she wanted to leave, otherwise. 

“You saying you don’t want to?” he teases, and Allie laughs out loud. He sort of loves that she thinks that’s like, a crazy thought. 

Then she leans over, puts her hand on his face, and presses her lips to his. It’s fucked up that he’s surprised, because this is the only thing they’ve talked about all night, basically. He lets out a sound when she takes his bottom lip between hers. Someone nearby says his name, but he doesn’t know what context or why. 

“Now you wanna go?” she asks, and her eyes are so fucking pretty he’s nodding as she slips her hand into his.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> adults. prompt: “and there was a time when i stood in line for love, for love, for love”

This quarantine might kill her. 

Okay, that’s...Poor choice of words. 

But look. She lives alone, and she’s driving herself crazy. Her place is too small to comfortably work remotely and still not feel like she has to work all the time. There’s no separation between her job and her personal life. She can’t stand that. She worked too much before. Now, there are days she looks up and it’s 10pm and she’s still in front of her computer. She misses her family, she’s tired of cooking her own food, she’s got only one bottle of wine left, and she thinks she’s probably gained 10 pounds. 

Possibly the worst thing is that she cannot fucking stand waiting in lines, and almost any time she does leave her house now, it’s to go wait for some essential thing or another. 

Ugh. 

She’s got her mask on, pulled up over her nose. Cassandra sewed a bunch of them to donate to a local seniors’ home and sent Allie one. She’d threatened to send one with cat fabric, but thankfully sent one that’s all black with dark purple thread. 

Allie hates that the aesthetics of her face mask are a thing she needs to think of in this year of our Lord 2020. 

She’s trying not to be on her phone in public, if not only because she wants to be able to move out of the way when people get too close. Waiting outside of Whole Foods on this narrow ass sidewalk is sort of one of the worst places, but she has to go further to get to Trader Joes like she usually does, and she doesn't have it in her to go far today.

This guy locks eyes with her as he’s walking down the sidewalk, and she’d normally look away, but there’s something sort of weirdly anonymizing about having half her face covered. The guy looks her up and down, then she can see the corners of his eyes crinkle a little and figure he’s smiling under the bandana he has tied around his mouth and nose. 

He’s being bold and if the circumstances were different, she honestly thinks this would be like, bordering on gross to her. 

So she says, “What?” as he passes, and hears him chuckle a little. 

When she turns around to get another look - because, okay, she thinks he’s kind of hot, too? What she can see of him is good, and she’s not ashamed to say that he’s totally not her type, if only because guys who look like that never go for her. 

He’s standing in line right behind her now, and she wishes the sidewalk would open up and swallow her whole. 

He nods at her and she turns back around quickly, embarrassed. 

Someone walks by with a big dog that sort of scares her, and she moves towards the wall a bit. She’s afraid of touching things, so quickly moves so her shoulder’s not touching the brick. 

“You okay?” Allie turns slowly, locks eyes with Hot Guy Behind Her, and nods a little. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” She wonders if he can see her blushing. He’s got his phone in his hand, spinning it for what looks like just something to do. 

“Wanna give me your number?”

She laughs out loud, her brows going up incredulously. Is he fucking serious? He shrugs one shoulder at her reaction. 

She asks, “Why?”

He asks, “You got something better to do?”

She thinks really what he’s asking is if she has a boyfriend, and the easy out would be to say yes, but she shakes her head no. 

She bites her lip, turns more to him, but keeps her eye on the line in front of her, too. (If someone cuts in front of her just ‘cause she’s not paying attention, she will absolutely get into some kind of fight today.)

She also kind of hates that she can hear her friend’s voice in her ear, telling her how is the time to be on dating apps, because she’ll be able to actually connect with people instead of guys just wanting to hook up and go too fast. 

“Why don’t we see how I like you by the time we get to the front of this line.”

He chuckles again, slips his phone into his pocket, leaves his hand there. “I’m really good under pressure.”

She feels flirtations, so she says, “See, I’m learning about you already.”

He pauses a moment, and she can tell he’s smiling again. “I’m Harry.”

She pushes her hair behind her earl. “Allie.”

“Nice to meet you, Allie.”

Okay, shit. Shit. 

She notices the first text from him after she’s gotten home, washed her hands and her groceries (because this is the way they’re living now?) and Lysoled her phone. He’s asking if she has Netflix Party downloaded and she replies that she’s not sure she knows him well enough to go on a date with him yet, throws in the wink emoji so he knows she’s joking. 

He calls her, which she’s not expecting. “20 questions?” he asks. 

“Why don’t you send me a picture of your full face, first? So I know who I’m talking to.”

Harry’s got a really great laugh. Allie closes her eyes and wonders what the fuck she’s doing, but knows she’s going to keep doing it for as long as it feels this good.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> adults. prompt: “sleeping all day, driving all night looking for a place we wanna go. we stole the night now this world is ours, love. Just us kids in a getaway car”

Honestly, he just thought she was hot and if he was lucky and said the right words, he might be able to convince her to come home with him.

His dad once told him pretty girls come with complicated stories. Something Harry should’ve paid attention to.

“Maybe I’ll hike the Appalachian Trail,” she days, and Harry should really get up and walk away. He’s been talking to her for 20 minutes. She’s clearly going through some kind of identity crisis. And Harry gets that. Fuck, most days he has no idea who he is or who he wants to be.

“You like hiking?” he asks, smirking, because girls who look like her and wear outfits and heels like this and drink Prosecco on Wednesday evenings? They don’t hike, probably.

Allie laughs, a sound he immediately likes, and says, “I’ve never done it.” Harry smiles at her and swirls the scotch around in his glass. It’s too loud here. He wants to take her home. “But that’s what I’m saying. I wanna try things.”

He leans in closer, traces his fingertips up her forearm, says, “We could probably knock some things off the list.”

She might laugh again, and he’d be fine with that. Not his best line. Not the worst, either. All sorta depends on how she takes it.

She smiles, looks down at his fingers then back up to his face. “Why? You wanna hike the Appalachian Trail, too?”

She’s teasing and he’s into it. Not sure what that says about him.

“Fuck no.”

He’s learned that she just graduated from NYU. Like, yesterday. She saw her parents off today. And he’s on summer break from law school and fucking around in the city until September. She told him she’s jealous. That now she has to find a job in a shitty economy. He just shrugged when she asked him how he can afford to coast all summer. Then she’d said, “Right. Columbia law. Fancy watch. Expensive scotch. Trust fund?”

It didn’t even come off like an insult when she said it.

“I have an idea,” she says, and he’s really turned on by the look in her eye and the way she says it. He cocks his brow. “Ask me to marry you.”

He chokes on his drink. Her ensuing laugh makes him think she’s either lost her fucking kind, or the cutest girl he’s ever met.

“What?”

“Just ask. See if we can get our drinks comped.”

He should not do this. It’s legitimately insane. But he kinda wants to see what’ll happen.

So that’s how they leave a Manhattan bar hand in hand, free alcohol buzzing through their systems, with her saying, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you just asked a stranger to marry you.”

She laughs again when he drops his jaw.

“Where to?” he asks, and she almost looks surprised that he’s not just taking her somewhere.

“We should shoplift.”

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, and her eyes sparkle in the streetlight. “You wanna get arrested?” She shrugs one shoulder. “What else you have in mind?”

She gets this really wicked look on her face and Harry honestly thinks he’s met his match.

“I always wanted to give someone a huge tip and say keep the change.” He rolls his eyes as he smiles. She holds out her hand. “Help. I’m poor.”

He takes out his wallet and hands her a $100 bill folded in half between his fingers. She smiles as she takes it. He only just now realized she could take off with it - he doesn’t know her - and he’d look like a damn fool. What she does instead is lead him into a little wine shop a block away, grab a $25 bottle and do this thing she’s always wanted. The way the guy at the register looks at her makes her feel good, Harry can tell. It’s weird, but he likes that he could do it for her.

“Okay, fiancée. What next?” He asks, just after she’s pulled her hand from his. Maybe that’s why he says it. He doesn’t want her to tell him she’s getting into a cab, or something.

She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks up at him from under her lashes. Yeah, he doesn’t need to keep going along with this. He just can’t think of a good enough reason not to.

Her cheeks are tinged pink when she says, “I’ve never slept with a stranger.”

Allie looks exactly as good naked as he thought she would.

She’s walking around his apartment in only a pair of underwear now, glass of shitty cheap wine in her hand. Her hair is a disaster down her back and she keeps asking him questions about his stuff. Mostly his books and the art on the walls. He thinks she’s really smart, probably. The way she talks about literature and stuff makes him find her even more attractive. She finds his tattered copy of Le Petit Prince, smiles and turns to look at him and says she loves this story. He shares that his dad used to read it to him when he was young. She’s silent a moment, smiles at him like she thinks that’s cute, and then asks, “Wait. You’re not a real prince, right?”

He thinks he’s laughed more with this girl than he has in like a year.

She comes to sit down next to him where he’s lying on his couch with a blanket over his bottom half. He pushes her hair back off her forehead. 

“What’s on your list?”

He smirks at her. “Only thing on my list tonight was getting you here.” She rolls her eyes, shoves gently at him. “I dunno. I wanna spend more time in Europe.”

Allie smiles. “Okay, but what’s something we could do tonight?”

“Technically, it’s morning.” It’s 3am and he’s seriously starting to consider that this could be the best night he’s ever had. “You don’t wanna jet off to Paris with the hot guy you met at the bar the day after graduation? Sounds like a pretty good story to me.”

Allie bites the corner of her lip, eyes locked with his. “Are you asking me?”

Harry smiles at her. Fuck. She’d do it. He can tell. 

“Maybe for our honeymoon,” he teases. Allie presses her nails into his chest lightly. It reminds him of earlier, when she was on top of him. Shit. “It’s stupid.”

Allie tilts her head. “My things were stupid.”

“Not all of them,” he says lowly, and she rolls her eyes at him. She sets her glass down on his coffee table and moves closer, her hand brushing through his hair in a way he likes way too fucking much. “I wanna watch the sunrise on a beach.”

She fucking beams at him, and he’s thinking he said the right thing. 

(He doesn’t know how he’ll be able to let this girl walk away at the end of their time together.)

She stands up, holds her hand out. When he gets up, the blanket falls to the floor, but she doesn’t pay attention to the fact that now he’s naked. A feat, he thinks, because he’s been staring at her bare chest any chance he gets since they moved from the bedroom to the living room.

“I assume, rich boy, that you have a fast car?” she asks, and it’s like a challenge, and he knows it’s predictable to love it as much as he does. But here they are. 

Allie’s dressed in her black jeans and silk top again, and she kicks her heels off before he’s even turned the key in the ignition. She’d checked to make sure he was sober enough to drive, but he hasn’t had anything since the two scotches he had hours ago. They pull out of the parking garage and she sets their destination as East Hampton. She sounds surprised he’s never been to the Hamptons, says something about all rich people from New York having places there. He grins, tells her his family’s summer place is in Maine. It makes her laugh again, and Harry smiles a little, looking at her.

She insists they need snacks. They stop for donuts, coffee and Starburst. Allie falls asleep holding his hand before they’re even out of the city. 

She wakes up as he cruises through the Hamptons towards the beach. It’s still dark, but he knows the sun’s gonna come up soon. Allie reaches for her coffee, rubs the sleep from her eye cutely, and apologizes for not being better company. He doesn’t want to tell her she’s the best company he’s ever had. 

They sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, on the sand as the sky starts changing colour. Allie leans her head on his shoulder and tells him, quietly, that maybe this has been her favourite night ever. He kisses her hair and doesn’t know where they go from here. 

He says, “I think I really like you,” and Allie hums, moves her hand to the inside of his thigh. He doesn’t hate it. It can’t be a bad sign. 

“Good thing, since we’re getting married.”

Harry doesn’t laugh, just smiles and wraps an arm around her, holds her as they watch the sun come up. The sky’s painting her face a pretty colour when she looks at him and asks him to tell her more about Paris.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “what if the one who was meant for your was all along right in front of you, just didn’t see, it was there all the time, got a feeling tonight, the stars align”

He has a lot of memories of Allie from when they were kids, when they all were sort of in each others’ periphery because of small towns and WASPy families. There’s her at 8 and obsessed with Harry Potter - but more specifically Hermione. He remembers her at Halloween, and his mom saying something about his name being Harry and he remembers blushing, because Harry Potter wasn’t cool, and Allie just didn’t care. She wore that cape to school for a week.

-

But the first time he notices her in the way guys his age notice girls, she’s fighting with her sister and looks super pissed, but then she’s crying, too, and she stomps past him without even seeing him. He thinks it’s probably a stupid thought, but her eyes look kind of pretty when she’s sad. He’s 14 and he knows she just had a birthday, too, and if he knows Cassandra, he knows she’s trying to be controlling and make sure Allie stays under her thumb. Maybe she’s not doing it on purpose, to keep Allie from doing anything else. He thinks Cassandra just likes it. 

-

Harry tries out for the play because it seems like just about the most fun thing he can do that’ll look good on his college applications. Allie’s there, too. She’s marking spots on the floor where the set pieces will be once they’re built. Harry’s standing there over her, Cassandra reciting her lines, and when Allie looks up at him, he smiles at her. She ignores him, huffs and tells him to get out of the way. He thinks she catches the edge of his shoe with tape on purpose, but he can’t be sure. 

-

He sees her with Will sometimes. Harry’ll be holding Kelly’s hand as they walk by, and he’ll see the way Allie looks at Will when he’s not paying attention, and Harry wonders if anyone has ever looked at him like that. He glances at Kelly. She’s got her phone in her hand, her eyes on the screen. He pulls his hand away and she doesn’t seem to miss it, just moves hers to hold her phone more securely. Harry looks to his feet. 

-

There’re flowers from the Pressman family. This big bouquet of whites and greens with a card that offers condolences. Harry wonders why the fuck anyone uses that word - there’s no word good enough to make a grieving family feel better. His sister’s being a miserable brat, and his mom’s throwing herself in to her work like her husband and the father of her children didn’t just die. Didn’t just kill himself. Harry wonders if he’ll ever feel like enough. His own dad wouldn’t even stick around for him.

The end of his first week back at school, there’s a spirit day. It’s ‘superhero’ day, or some stupid shit. Harry’s not in the mood. 

He sees Allie outside his French class. He thinks she has Spanish nextdoor. She’s wearing a denim button down half tucked into black pants. She looks good. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw her and she didn’t. He just never says anything because Kelly. People think he’s a dick, but he’s not a cheater, okay? 

“Clark Kent?” she asks, and he thinks she’s teasing. This is the first time in ages she’s spoken to him without asking or telling him to do something.

He breathes out a laugh, dreading going to French. Like, his family summered in France when he was 11 and he had a tutor and a French nanny. This class is basic and he’s only taking it for the language credit. 

“Surprised you’re not dressed like Cassandra,” he says, and doesn’t realize it’s a shitty thing to say until Allie’s face falls and she looks down, her hair falling around her face. “This is a good look, though.”

She glances back up at him. “What?”

He rolls his eyes like she’s slow. “You look good. Hot, even.” Her cheeks turn pink and she moves her hair off her face with her hand. Shit. He likes that. “I don’t have a hero.” Allie watches, waits for more of an explanation. “No one’s gonna run in and save me, ya know?”

Allie nods like she might get what he’s talking about. 

Kelly’s walking down the hall in a Xena, Warrior Princess tee shirt, smiles when she sees him, then slips her hand into his and presses a kiss to his cheek. 

“Hey Allie.” Allie looks uncomfortable. Maybe because he was just complimenting her looks, or something. But he didn’t like, proposition her, so she could stop looking guilty. “Ready, mon cheri?” 

Harry laughs, nods. He doesn’t say goodbye to Allie. When he looks over his shoulder, she’s standing there with her eyes closed taking a deep breath like she needs to prepare to go inside her classroom. He sort of wishes he knew what that was about. 

-

He’s watching from across the room when she kisses Will. It doesn’t go well. Harry feels himself scrunch his face when he can see Will say something that looks mad or mean. Allie looks really upset, but then she glances around to see if anyone saw that, and slips back into her usual calm, cool persona. Her shoulders press back and she walks into the kitchen. Harry sips his beer and decides to mind his own business. 

This lasts about 32 minutes. When he slips out the back door, Allie’s sitting there on the steps, looking out over the yard. Most people are inside. Luke and Helena are making out on a lounge chair. 

Allie glances over her shoulder to see who’s come outside. He thinks he sees her roll her eyes when she notices it’s him. He chooses to ignore that, and sits down next to her. 

“I don’t need a guardian,” she says, and there’s definitely more of a story there. She’s being defensive and he doesn’t know why. She laughs quietly, shakes her head. “What are you doing out here?”

“Fresh air,” he tells her, then pulls the joint from his breast pocket. She laughs, but shakes her head. Whatever. If she doesn’t like it, she’s welcome to leave. She doesn’t have like, claim to the porch. He sparks his lighter and inhales.

Allie takes his beer from between his feet on the step below where they’re sitting, and takes a drink. 

“Are all guys assholes?” she asks, and it sounds like a joke, but when he looks at her, she seems serious. “Like, is that just a lesson I haven’t learned yet?”

“I dunno.” He inhales again, counts to three, then exhales. “Probably.”

She laughs humourlessly. He holds the joint out for her, and she seems to at least think about saying no before she takes it, draws it between her lips. “There’s Will, and you, and idiots like Clark, and I’m just...Fucking tired of it, honestly.”

Harry grins. “What’d I do?”

She passes the joint back to him. Part of him wonders if she needs it more than he does. 

“Please,” she says, laughing. He thinks she looks really cute when she does that. Kelly’s inside somewhere drinking too much vodka and he should be near her, not sitting thinking about how cute another girl is. (Maybe proving Allie’s point.) “I know all about you.”

He grins, leans his elbows on his knees, passes the joint back. She takes it. 

Okay, she looks downright sexy when she takes a hit, tilts her head back and blows smoke in the air. 

“You know what Cassandra tells you.”

“Mhm, and it’s enough to prove you’re a jerk.”

He’s not surprised this is her opinion of him. They don’t really know each other. What’s messed up is how badly he wants her to like him. Or at least think better of him. 

“I’m not only what Cassandra sees,” he says quietly. Allie seems to think about this, then her fingers brush his when she hands him the joint. 

She says, “Me neither,” but it’s practically a whisper and he doesn’t know how to respond to that at all. “Thanks for the fresh air.”

Harry laughs, joint between his lips, and salutes her as she stands and heads back inside. He sees her smiling and thinks she should do that more. 

-

She’s crying at graduation when he sees her. She’s wearing a black dress with flowers on it and he’s in this stupid cap and gown. She gives him a hint of a smile and a little wave. She mouths congratulations. Harry smiles back. He tries not to be envious of his classmates who have friends and family all fussing over them. He leaves, goes home and waits for tonight’s party. 

She’s not there. He feels stupid for thinking she would be. He feels stupid for wishing she was. She was right - they don’t really know each other. 

-

He learns from Kelly, who heard from that girl Becca, that Allie’s going to be at Brown next year. He’s wrapping up his freshman year and feeling like he’s better - happier - here than he’s ever been anywhere else. He can just like, take the classes he wants and make the friends he wants, and as long as he doesn’t flunk out, it keeps his mom happy, too. 

He sees Allie for the first time on campus in October of his sophomore year. She’s with this tall brunette he can tell thinks she’s prettier than she is. Harry’s only looking at Allie. She doesn’t see him, which he’s sort of fine with. He’s got to get to class anyway. 

She finds him next. He doesn’t know how she knew he had sociology lecture today, but she’s standing against the wall when he walks out, her foot pressed against it, and she smiles when she sees him. 

“Hey,” he tells her, and she loops her arm through his like they had plans, or something. “Where’re we going?”

“There’s a party off campus I don’t want to go to alone.” He wants to reply, but she adds, “And I owe you some weed.”

Yeah, sharing a joint with her like two years ago isn’t...He’s not been holding out for an IOU. But. He’ll take it.

Getting high with Allie at this lame party where he doesn’t know anyone but her isn’t the worst thing. He doesn’t know what it is other than that. They share a Lyft and it drops her off first. Harry doesn’t even have her number in his phone, but he does know what it feels like when she kisses his cheek and says, “Bye, Harry,” before she gets out, and that feels like something. 

-

When Allie joins the development firm he’s been working at for a year and a half, he thinks his head’s spinning. He’s seen her, over the years. There were parties, and that time at the coffee shop, and a few times in West Ham. She looked gorgeous on the Fourth of July right after he’d graduated. Grizz had hosted and Allie was there with Cassandra. Harry had only gone because Grizz was one of the only people from home that he’d ever felt genuinely cared about him. He’s to this day glad he saw Allie in her black two piece. 

Now, though, she’s joined the corporate social responsibility team and she’s ‘introduced’ to him on her first day. She looks a little surprised to see him, and for a second he wonders if she’s gonna pretend they’ve never met. 

But she smiles, says, “Harry and I go way back,” and Jonah from HR asks Harry to tell Allie about what he does here. 

… … …

They order food to the office one night, when she’s bribed him with french fries to get him to stay and give his input on this proposal she’s making on social procurement, or something. She says she needs someone from the design side “or whatever” to help make sure she’ snot talking out her ass, and Harry…

Well, look. They’ve gotten closer over the last year. Spending time with her isn’t a chore. He doesn’t like to think about how much he looks forward to it. Doesn't care to think about what that means. 

And her proposal and this entire plan is great, and thorough and thoughtful and he’s not surprised at all and neither will anyone else be. 

He’s sipping from this shitty fountain drink - Sprite that tastes more like tonic water - when he notices she’s just sort of looking at him. Smiling, too. He doesn’t want to ask her what she’s thinking. He’s learned that if you just give her long enough she’ll say it out loud. 

“I used to have the biggest crush on you.”

Harry grins around his straw, then leans forward. “When?”

“High school,” she says, and he’s looking for more specifics, but won’t beg for them. He’s curious about the timeline, because he knows she was like, in love with Will. “I wondered how much of it was you being hot and popular and nice to me, and how much of it was my need to rebel against Cassandra.”

“You figure it out?” She shrugs her shoulder, which is cute and attractive and absolutely a yes. “But you don’t have a crush on me anymore.”

It’s a statement, because he doesn’t want her to be uncomfortable. She used past tense and he’s learned that with women it’s always best to take their words at face value until they suggest you do otherwise. He doesn’t like making assumptions that aren’t based in fact.

“Now it’s different.” He tilts his head, knows he wants to know more. “I’m an adult. I don’t crush.”

“Right,” he laughs. Allie’s cheeks are a little pink. “Of course.” She holds his gaze for too long, then her eyes slide away like she’s worried this was a mistake or something. “Maybe I do.”

She laughs, shakes her head, as if she thinks he’s just amusing her, or something. “Sure.”

He knows she wouldn’t have said anything if she didn’t think he at least felt something. Why put herself out there if she thought she was gonna get shut down? 

“Yeah, it’s...Got a bit of a thing for you.”

Allie slurps her root beer loudly and leans back in her chair like she’s being smug about getting him to admit it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "if you remember what i said back then, just know in my heart i'll always mean it but i can't ever say it again."

He says it once, when they’re 21 and lying in bed in his family’s summer house in Maine. Allie’s skin’s all tanned and glowing, and Harry’s feeling a little loopy from having cocktails in the sun and then Allie under him. 

“What if we’re soulmates?”

Allie laughs, shakes her head at him. It’s funny, really, because he doesn’t think either of them believes in soulmates. When she leans over him, her necklace dangles invitingly and he reaches up and gently tugs with his finger, just enough so she’ll lean closer. Which feels fucking incredible where they’re pressed together, her hips over his. 

“Don’t say things like that,” she whispers, lips just above his. 

“Why?”

She hesitates and Harry searches her eyes. Then she leans up, sinks down on him, and kisses him as the groan leaves his throat. “Because what if it’s true?” she breathes, and then slips her thumb into his mouth as she starts to move. He thinks it’s just to get him to not talk more. It’s fine. Maybe. It’s hot, anyway, and Harry goes with it.

-

Harry doesn’t wear a wedding ring.

He has one. He doesn’t like the way it bites into his skin and catches on his pants pocket and pinches, sometimes, when he’s driving.

His wife doesn’t care. Her rings are sparkly enough to make up for it, apparently.

Allie places her delicate gold band on a nearby flat surface every time they do this. Which is more often than they should. Fuck, of course it is. They’re both married to other people. But he isn’t sure that either of them knows how to give it up. And he knows he doesn’t want to.

“I’m in town for three days,” she tells him. He smiles at her, watches her slide her panties up her legs.

“Should I keep the room?” he asks. Allie stays with her folks when she’s in town, unless she’s with her husband. She’s said something about just renting an apartment here, but she hasn’t pulled the trigger.

“You should do what you want,” she laughs, and Harry smiles, leans up and reaches for her hand. He doesn’t have to tug at all to get her closer. He likes that.

“Want you to stay.” He presses kisses across her shoulder, moves her hair aside so he can get to her neck. She loves that. He learned it when they were 18 and hasn’t forgotten.

“I have to go see mom.”

He stops. He’s not gonna try to make a move when she’s talking about her mom. That’s why she’s in West Ham so often. Alzheimer’s. Every few weeks, Allie comes in from Boston. He knows she feels some sense of duty to not stay away too long. He thinks also - though she hasn’t admitted it flat out - she’s fucking terrified of the day she knows will come, when she shows up and her mom doesn’t recognize her.

“Dinner at Luke and Helena’s later. I take it you won’t be there?” he asks. She shakes her head. She pushes her hand through his hair. He thinks she’s thinking the same thing he is. Which is some kind of imaginary other world where they’re together and go to dinner with friends.

“Meet me here tomorrow morning?” she asks, looking at their joined hands. Harry squeezes twice. It’s sort of their thing. A silent communication. 

Harry watches her get dressed. She kisses him before she goes. They never leave at the same time.

Her wedding band is sitting on the dresser. Harry leaves it there as he goes. He saw her grab the key card. She can come back for it tonight if she wants to.

(She must. When he walks in the next day, it’s not there. She arrives with it on, then slips it off again. Harry reaches for the top button of the shirt she’s wearing, watches her tongue slide along her bottom lip.)

-

He can’t be in this house without thinking of Allie. Not just them hooking up when they were still young enough to think it made sense to ‘keep it casual’, but really, that entire summer with her. She’d been asked along to be his sister’s nanny. She spent all her time off duty with him. He learned that she can never eat an ice cream cone fast enough to keep it from dripping down her hands, but is too stubborn to eat from a cup ‘like a kid’. He learned the only thing she ever wanted as a child was to live near the water. And that she’s got a little birthmark on her ribcage, and she liked to play with his hair, and she’s quiet when she comes. 

Now, he’s here for two weeks with his wife, his mom and sister, and his sister’s new girlfriend, which was a whole thing he had to mediate because his mom was being fucking stupid. 

He’s sitting on the back porch, pushing himself on a porch swing. His sister comes outside, beer in her hand, and says, “Remember that one summer?”

He knows the one. It was the only time they spent a full summer here. It was the first time they’d come at all since their dad died. 

“Yeah.” 

“Allie was my first crush,” she says, little grin on her lips, and Harry laughs until his sides hurt.

-

He’s in Boston for work and asks if she’ll meet him for a drink. She asks, “Just a drink?” and he can’t tell if it’s an invitation, or confirmation. She doesn’t like to do this here. Which he gets. She’s a hot shot business consultant at a massive company and knows a ton of people. Harry’s doing policy work, mostly out of New Haven. Sometimes he travels to other places. Boston and New York and DC mostly.

She’s wearing a black dress with a burgundy blazer overtop and lipstick to match and Harry’s immediately fucking in love with this look on her. She touches his arm and kisses his cheek and he wishes they were alone. She picked the bar, which probably means there’s a low chance of her seeing anyone he knows.

He comments that the wine list is good, and she’s the one who chooses a glass each for them.

He knows she’s coming back to the hotel with him, then. One of the few rules they have is that they don’t do this drunk. She wants to always know they’re making this choice with a clear head. He doesn’t know why it’s so important to her, but it’s an easy rule to follow.

(The other ones can be harder. Like not spending a lot of time talking about their spouses, and not making plans too far ahead of time.)

If he thought the outfit was great, what’s under it is a thousand times better. This black bra he immediately wants to peel off her, and solid black panties stretched across her hips. She gathers her hair over one shoulder and walks towards him. They must look fucking ridiculous. Her, mostly naked, and him, belt undone, tie crooked, shirt untucked. And just staring at her.

“Catch up,” she teases, then stops in front of him, just out of his reach. 

Harry shakes his head, likes the idea of her undressing him. Also really, really likes the idea of just looking at her like this.

“I can wait.”

Allie laughs softly, moves to the bed, sits, and then pushes herself back so she’s against the pillows. Harry wishes he could take a picture. Preserve the memory, or something. Not that he doesn’t have a lot of her, anyway - he’s good at not forgetting the way they are together. (Which is probably why they keep doing it.)

He tilts his head just slightly, takes a breath. Allie moves her hand over her hip as he watches. 

“Okay, maybe I can’t,” he says, grinning. Allie laughs out loud and he unbuttons his shirt the rest of the way, pushes his pants down, joins her on the bed. Her hands move to his face when he settles between her legs, her thighs warm against his. “Do you wanna talk?”

Allie laughs softly, fingers running through his hair above his ear. “About what?”

“How hot you are? How much I like you?” She smiles up at him. They talk a lot. They talk a lot about this, this thing they do, and they’ve basically said they’ll do it as long as they both want to. And when one of them doesn’t, they’ll stop. 

(He’s almost said he loves her more times than he can count. She always sort of just ignores it. She slips up, too, from time to time. Like last year in West Ham when she’d slid her thumb over his left hand fourth finger and said, “God, Harry, I just…”)

And sometimes, they talk in clichés, because they can make a joke of it, of how ridiculous people can be. It’s safer. Easier. 

So she says, “Show me,” and smiles when he laughs. 

-

His wife asks him for a divorce when he’s 32. Something about not loving him. Something about an affair with a colleague. She makes it sound like her fault. Harry doesn’t feel guilty. 

He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t tell Allie until she’s in town next. Maybe it just feels like the a thing he shouldn’t share via text. She’s rented a furnished apartment in West Ham now, and has started coming more often. They don’t see each other every time; he knows it’s because her mom’s getting worse. It’s just this 500 square foot studio in the new development on the west side of town. Harry invested in the project and made a shit load of money after it was complete. Allie knows this. He’s positive it didn’t have anything to do with her decision. 

He can tell she’s upset when he arrives. She’d asked him to bring snacks, so he’d grabbed chocolate croissants - her favourite - from the bakery in town. This is only his second time here. There’s a little flower arrangement on the edge of the counter. Last time there were no photos of her family. There’s notably no photo of her with her husband. Harry knows why. This place is almost as much for them as it is just for her. 

The way she hugs him lets him know she needs comforting. He’s never been one to be able to say no to her. Can’t start now. 

Apparently her mom was angry today. Didn’t want to comply with anything, and downright resisted some asks. At one point, she reached out to hit Allie. “It wasn’t her,” Allie says a little brokenly. She shows him the small bruise on her forearm from where she blocked the strike. 

He feels like shit. He sinks his hand into her hair and tells her it’s okay. That she can be upset and angry. That he’s here. 

Then she says, when her face is still pressed against his shoulder, “Dad told me your news.” Harry sighs. When Allie pulls away, she’s smiling a little. She wipes her eyes. Then one hand fists his shirt at his chest and the other slips into his, weaving their fingers together. She just blinks, waiting. He shrugs a shoulder lazily, not knowing what she wants to hear. “Harry.” 

“Hm?” 

“What if…” She stops. Laughs. Looks up at him like she’s scared to say it out loud. But he knows exactly what it is.

Harry brushes a thumb against her cheek, smiles a little. “What if?” he asks.

Allie squeezes his hand twice. Kisses him. Thanks him for the croissant. Takes him to bed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “cause you’ll be safe in these arms of mine. Just call my name on the edge of the night, and I’ll run to you”

They broke up for good reasons. He knows that. And god, it’s been three months now and he does miss her, misses being in a relationship, which surprises the hell out of him. He’s had a couple one night stands and dated a girl for a while, which is…

Look, he and Allie broke up because he was a fucking mess and needed time. Therapy. A program to stop him feeling like he needed to medicate to get through his days. 

But they didn’t leave it open-ended. They didn’t leave it like ‘maybe when you get your shit together we can try again’. They just broke up, and she’d told him to please take care of himself. She’d kissed him on the cheek, wiped her face, and left. 

He just feels worse than he has for any other breakup. Because he didn’t fuck up and forget to care about her. And he didn’t fuck up and kiss someone else. And he didn’t fuck up and say it wasn’t serious. He was good with her, good to her, but he still wasn’t good enough. 

-

Harry’s current obsession is foreign films. Just another thing he can throw himself into that feels more healthy than getting high, or whatever. 

His phone starts buzzing and he considers not even bothering to find it in his bed, but he hasn’t spoken to a human all day - Saturdays are easy days to isolate away from people - and he doesn’t know who’d be calling him near midnight, and he’s at least a little intrigued. When his phone falls onto the bed as he shakes his duvet, he sees Allie’s name and the pretty photo he took of her on his screen. She hasn’t called him in...She hasn’t called him. 

“Hello?”

“Hi. Hey,” she breathes out. “Are you…” She pauses, just a little too long. Harry’s not sure what the hell is happening. “Can you pick me up?”

Oh. Oh. She was going to ask if he was sober. 

“Yeah,” he says without thinking too hard about it. “Where are you?”

“Are you sure? It’s late, and I just...I wanna get out of here and I had a weird experience with an Uber driver on the way here, and…”

“Allie,” he says gently, stopping her. “I’m sure. Where are you?”

She says she’ll text him the location, and he maps to it when he’s pulling on a sweater and slipping on his shoes. It’s the end of summer, when it’s cool enough at night to add a layer. When he walks outside, it’s still super humid and he runs a hand through his hair as he unlocks his car door. It’s just a 15 minute drive to where she is, which sort of messes him up. Not that it’s unusual for him to think about her somewhere in this city; he does that a lot, actually. Like just casually thinking about her at that place she goes to with Elle for brunch on Sundays sometimes, or stopping at that taco truck on her way home from work. 

She’s standing outside when he pulls up. She’s alone, looks like she’s shivering, and the bouncer at this bar seems to have an eye on her, too. In a good way. He catches Harry’s eye, nods once, and Allie makes her way over and gets in. 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing she says. Harry points the heat vent towards her. “I got scared and wasn’t sure who else to call.”

He doesn’t want to feel too good about this. Being a last resort when she’s stranded isn’t anything to be flattered by. But he does like that she thought she could count on him. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, and she nods, and then lets out this little laugh. “What’s the deal with the Uber driver?”

Because yeah, he’s been sort of pissed since she said it and he’s trying to understand if this is something that requires more than just her deleting the app. 

“He said something gross about how I was dressed and the fact that I was alone. I made him drop me off immediately and emailed support as I was walking the rest of the way.” Harry sort of smiles. He can tell, too, that she’s not been drinking. “I didn’t even want to come tonight. It’s so stupid.” 

“It’s okay,” he says, hoping it’s reassuring and doesn’t sound empty. “Home?”

Allie considers his question. He watches her do it. Then she turns and looks at him for the first time and her shoulders kind of deflate. Maybe, actually, it looks like relief. Like she’s been tense all night and she knows she’s safe now. 

“I don’t really want to be alone,” she admits softly. Harry thought he was over her. Or, no, he just thought over her was at least a thing he would be someday. Now, though, he thinks he’s every bit as fucked as he was the day she left. He must take too long, because she shakes her head and looks to her lap. “Nevermind. It’s...Nevermind.”

“My place, or yours?”

Allie whispers, “Yours,” and he wants to hold her hand, but doesn’t. 

-

He hands her a sweater and the grey joggers she always used to ‘steal’ from him, and she slips into the bathroom to change out of her clothes. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before - the outfit she had on - but god, you know sometimes when you see someone and they make the simplest things look so fucking good? That’s what it’s like with Allie. 

He’s pulling off his sweater, his tee shirt riding up his torso, when she walks back into his bedroom. He can’t help smiling at her when he tosses the article onto his dresser and she looks him up and down before he can pull his tee shirt back down. 

“You wanna sleep?” he asks, because he doesn’t know how this goes, how to handle having her here when they’re not together, and he hasn’t seen her in months, and she called him out of the blue. She shakes her head, but gets into his bed anyway, taking the left side like always, and turns on her side so she’s watching him. 

He puts his hands on his hips and says he’ll get her some water. 

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

He braces his hands on the counter in the kitchen, trying to remind himself this doesn’t mean anything. She was stuck and she needed help. 

She’s got the television turned on when he returns, and she’s sort of laughing when she says, “You’ve started reading movies, now?”

He chuckles, tries to make sure their fingers don’t touch when he passes the glass to her. No use. She reaches for his wrist to pull him into bed with her, and he ends up sort of on one knee, leaning over her a bit. He can remember so vividly how it felt to kiss her like this, in his bed, with her smiling this way. 

“Something to do,” he says, shrugging his shoulder. He gets into bed next to her, leans back against his headboard. He seriously loves the way her hair’s splayed on the pillow. The way he can just barely see the name of his alma mater across her chest under the duvet. The way she’s looking up at him. 

“How are you doing?”

He smiles a little, which is sort of his stock reaction when someone tries to be polite and asks how he’s doing with that whole mental health and substance abuse thing. 

“I’m good, Allie,” he says sincerely, because unlike when other people ask, it actually feels really important that she know. “One day at a time, and all that.” She smiles, eyes all soft, as she nods. If he let himself, he’d think she almost looks proud. “How are you?”

She laughs a little, shuffles down in the bed a little more, turns to him again. Fuck, she’s cute. She’s everything. 

“I’m…” He really, really wants her to just say the thing. They’ve never had to hold back from each other. He doesn’t want her to now. “Sad.”

Harry smiles down at her gently, moves down the bed so their faces are closer together. “Why are you sad?”

She bites her lip cutely, then releases it, and laughs at herself. He thinks it’s at herself. 

“I miss you so much sometimes it makes me feel stupid.”

Not the answer he was thinking. 

But he says, “I miss you, too,” all quietly, and she nods like she knows. Because of course she knows. “Why do you feel stupid?”

“Maybe you needed my help,” she says, and he thinks she might cry, and he worries about his ability to handle that. “And then also I felt so sure about breaking up with you and what does it say about me if I…” Harry’s heart is beating hard. She tucks her hands up under her cheek. “If I still want you.”

“Allie,” he breathes, and he wants to tell her not to say things like that if she doesn’t mean them. Because it means too much to him and if it’s not serious, he can’t… “Do you?”

Shit. He shouldn’t have asked that. He wants to touch her so bad. She’s the one who reaches over, though, puts her hand on his chest over his shirt. 

“I lied earlier,” she confesses, then laughs quietly and he looks at her questioningly. “When I said I didn’t know who else to call.” 

“Yeah?”

She nods, moves closer. Harry swallows. “I knew exactly who to call.” She looks up at him through her lashes. “But you’re doing so well. I don’t want to get in the way of that.” 

“You’re not in the way.” He thinks he’s still in love with her. He’s regretting that he never told her. He doesn’t want them to be over. But he knows he doesn’t get to decide that alone. “I’m up to my eyes in therapy and AA meetings now.”

Good. Yes. Joking.

“Harry,” she breathes out, trying not to laugh. 

“Come here?” he says like a question, opening his arm so she’ll move right up against him. He shouldn’t have doubted she would. He takes a deep breath when she’s pressed against his side. “I still want you,” he confesses quietly. Allie’s fingers dig into his side in response. “It’s okay if you’re not sure.”

She says, “I’m sure,” and presses her lips to his heart through his shirt. He kisses her forehead and lets his eyes slip closed. 

She’s still there in the morning when he wakes up. He wasn’t sure she would be, and she asks, “Why not?” when he says that out loud. 

She presses her lips against his for the first time when he’s making coffee. His hand sinks into her hair and god, he thinks he could happily hear this little sound she makes every day. He tells her that, too. She says his name all softly and plays with her hair, which is fucking adorable.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "you pull out the polaroid and i’ll strike a couple poses. oh let’s get a little wild, bring me weed instead of roses"

It’s not that they run away together. Not exactly. It’s more like...On a whim, he says something about spending the summer travelling, and Allie’s just finished her bachelor’s and feels terrified of what’s coming next. They’re not even friends, really. They talk sometimes, when they’re both in West Ham. He drove her home from a beach party once, but Helena and Luke were in the car, too. 

Harry saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?” makes her laugh like he’s insane. She can think of at least eight different reasons to say no. Not the least important being the cost of spending six weeks in Europe, or whatever. But he tells her to just ask her parents, and they’ll probably say yes. 

She does. They do. She conveniently leaves out the part about him being there, too. (Cassandra finds out and she’s pissed. Allie rolls her eyes and tells her to relax, which doesn’t help.) 

She lands in Heathrow and knows he’s already here in London somewhere. They couldn’t get the same flight. Rather, he’d booked his already and Allie waited a few days to decide if she really wanted to do this, or if she wanted to say fuck it and ditch him. They hadn’t made any promises. 

She turns her phone on and he’s texted her the name of a hotel, says he’ll meet her in the room. 

Why they’re sharing, she doesn’t know. Something about saving money, he’d said. Which is fucking ridiculous and made her laugh. Money isn’t an issue for either of them. He just wants her in bed with him, probably. 

She shouldn’t be flattered. 

He’s wearing a plaid shirt and khakis when she walks into the room. He has no business looking that good in something so basic. She drops her suitcase on the little stand, waves at him then goes to wash her hands. 

“Fish and chips?” he suggests, and god, that’s so dumb, isn’t it? 

“Beer first.” 

Harry throws an arm around her, says, “I like the way you think,” and holds the door open for her. 

When they stumble back into the room, drunk, he pulls a Polaroid camera out of his bag and asks if he can take her picture. He takes three - two of her alone, and one of them together. She flops into bed in her clothes and doesn’t look at them until the morning. She thinks they look good together, even pouting their lips, squinting, and clearly drunk as hell.

-

At a castle in Ireland, he wanders off when she’s marveling at the way the greenery is coming up over the ruins. She doesn’t care. They’ve been good at doing their own thing and then finding one another later. When they were in Covent Garden, she’d left him to explore by herself, and he only texted an hour later that he’d found a coffee shop and she could meet him there if she wanted. 

Allie’s sitting on the grass, leaning back on her hands with her legs crossed in front of her, and he wanders up with his hand in his pocket. 

“Look what I found,” he says, pulling a small bag of weed out of his pocket. Allie laughs. 

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.”

The Airbnb they got has a balcony. The booking details said no smoking, but Harry doesn’t seem bothered, just closes the door behind them and places a book on his lap, rolls a joint in such a practiced way that Allie sort of thinks it’s hot. He passes it to her to light. She likes the way he’s looking at her as she does it. 

They walk to the pub on the corner and drink some thick beer she thinks could be a fucking meal. She’s giggling when Harry orders them an appetizer platter to share, saying something about her needing some fucking mozzarella sticks, or something. The bartender calls her a lass and Harry looks jealous, which is stupid considering they aren’t together and are sort of just...traveling together. Moving in the same direction, is maybe a better description. 

“You’re kinda hot,” he tells her when she licks salt off her fingers and reaches for her beer. 

Allie looks over, shakes her head at him. “I’m not gonna fall for you, Harry,” is what leaves her lips. She’s high on this Irish weed and the beer’s gone straight to her head. 

Harry leans back in his seat, but then she feels his hand on her knee under the table. She probably proves his point - whatever it is - when she doesn’t tell him to move. 

He takes his stupid camera out of his crossbody bag, tells her to pose for him. It’s sexy, the way he says it. Allie tells him she’s gonna chug her beer, and he’s laughing when he snaps the photo of her doing it.

-

They take the train to France. They could’ve flown, but she said she wanted to take the train because it seems so close. Harry’s been to Paris, tells her it’s overrated. She can’t say she has a super strong desire to see it. She wants to see Versaille, though, and then some chateaus and some really old grapes. He calls her lame, but they do exactly what she wants, so he can’t be too serious. 

Harry takes her photo in the hall of mirrors. She’s wearing a pink dress and she turns, touches her chin to her shoulder and lifts her heel off the floor. She’s sort of just joking about it, just trying to be stupid for the camera, but then the look on Harry’s face makes her think she probably looks good. 

She takes the photo from his hand, sticks it in her purse. She takes a photo of him in the gardens when he’s not looking. It’s on her phone, which feels weird, so she takes the Polaroid from him and gets a candid. 

Harry rents them a room in a literal fucking chateau, and when they’re checking in, he says, right in front of the desk clerk, “What my girl wants, my girl gets.”

Allie scoffs, pulls away from him, takes the old timey key from his hand and walks away as he laughs. 

The room is absolutely gorgeous, exactly what she’d expected, to be honest. She wishes she had expensive lingerie to lounge and drink wine in. All she has is a satin nightgown with lace at the top. She is not going to let Harry take this away from her. When he steps into the room, he’s got a bunch of peonies in his hand, and he stops in his tracks when he sees her standing there, glass of red in her hand as she looks out the window. 

“Damn, Allie,” he says, slipping his smug grin bag in place as he closes and locks the door behind him. “Where was this in the UK?”

“For France only,” she says, sort of teasing. 

Harry lies down on the bed, resting the flowers on his stomach, and asks, “Wanna stay here for the rest of the summer?”

She thinks he’s joking. She pours him some wine.

She hears the click of the camera when she’s not looking, when the afternoon sun is coming in through the window and she’s thinking they probably shouldn’t be drinking so early in the day. She looks over at him and he’s pulling the photo from the camera. 

“You look really beautiful,” he says, and he’s never said that to her before, used that word. She smiles at him, tilts her head just slightly.

“Your whole trip is just gonna be pictures of me,” she says, which may be stupid. Harry smiles, sips his wine. Those flowers are going to die if they don’t get water, so she walks over, reaches for them. She presses her nose into them and then sees the empty vase on a side table. 

“Maybe that’s what I wanna remember,” he tells her, hand brushing along the small of her back as she fills the vase. 

She ignores how good it makes her feel. He backs away when she doesn’t respond. Then he pulls a pack of fancy French cigarettes and a plastic bag with three joints in it out of his pocket. 

“Who knew one of your greatest skills was procuring weed in every country around the world?”

Harry’s brows wiggle and she only takes two hits before she reaches for one of the cigarettes and lights it, feeling sexy as she smokes it. She usually thinks smoking is gross, but she’s on her second glass of wine and the tastes go so well together. Her head’s hazy in the best way, and Harry orders some bread and cheese to the room, opens the door to receive it and shields her away from the eyes of whoever’s delivered it. 

He keeps looking at her like he wants her, and she keeps leaning towards him like she likes it. He takes a photo of her hand holding her wine glass and a cigarette, smoke rolling off it and the ornate decoration of the curtains in the background. 

In the morning, she’s hungover and her voice sounds gravelly and Harry’s staring at her chest when she says good morning. He reaches over with his finger, hesitates as he looks at her eyes as if he’s waiting for her to stop him. She doesn’t. He traces the tip of his index finger along the lace and then up under the strap of her nightgown. 

He says, “I’m glad you’re here,” and sounds like he’s afraid of what she’ll say to this vulnerability. Allie smiles a little, reaches up and, for reasons she can’t explain, draws her thumb across his bottom lip. 

Then she tells him to go find croissants. He does. 

They’re only supposed to stay a week. On day 6, he says, “Let’s stay longer,” and Allie nods and says she needs to buy more France-appropriate clothing. He pretends not to know what that means, but when she returns from a trip to the nearby town with a bag with a silk romper, and a pair of ridiculous high waisted panties and matching bra in a deep burgundy, his eyes get dark. He starts touching her more. He takes photos of her. 

After they’ve finished most of a bottle of champagne and another joint, she tells him to strip down so they’re even. She takes a breath when he lies back on the bed in his stupid Calvin Klein boxer briefs, because god, they are just...they’re fucked. Allie takes a picture of him, which, predictably, he can’t stop staring at and talking about how good he looks. She takes another, when she gets onto the bed with him. It’s her hand on his chest and her leg is slung over his and you’re supposed to be able to see their faces, but it ends up just being them from the chest down. Her dark red polished nails popping against his skin, and the top of her bare thigh just visible below the band of his boxers. 

“I’m not sure I could handle you,” he tells her jokingly, and she laughs, blowing smoke up in the air. She sort of wants him to try

-

He asks where they should go next. She chooses Santorini because she thinks she’ll look good there. He calls her vain, and she laughs her ass off at Harry fucking Bingham calling a single other person vain. 

He gets a haircut and she buys a white summer dress so she can show off her tan, and then they spend the whole first day on the beach. Harry snaps a photo of her on his phone, her in the white dress, her hair all over one shoulder and blue eyes looking piercing with the buildings and the water in the background. She wonders if it means anything that he didn’t use the Polaroid. 

He tells her he hasn’t been able to get them any weed, and she shrugs her shoulder because she doesn’t really care. 

She kisses him when they’re walking along the sand, because his hand just accidentally brushed hers, then he’d taken it to hold. 

He asks, “Are you sure?” like she’s going to fuck him right here on the beach, or something, and she rolls her eyes, a little annoyed, but drapes her arm around his neck anyway. 

She laughs against his shoulder, later, when she’s coming down from an orgasm and he’s still on top of her, still inside her. They’re both sober and that was honestly better than she was expecting from him. (In her experience, guys who think this highly of themselves are usually fucking clueless.) 

“We made it almost a month,” she says, and Harry chuckles from low in his throat. He moves gently, pressing into her. It makes her gasp. 

“Longer than I thought.” 

She smiles at him, trails her fingers down his back. “You think you’re that irresistible?”

“No.” His voice is probably sexier than she’s ever heard it. “I think you are.”

Allie leans her head back, moaning when he presses his lips against her neck and rolls his hips again. 

-

Harry holds her hand in Portugal. The sidewalks are narrow and steep in places, a little slippery, and when he lets go, it’s usually to take photos of buildings or tiles or doors hidden on these little streets. She learns the key words and phrases easier than he does - Portuguese is hard - and he tells her that’s hot, too. 

They eat pastel de nata in Belém, and drink too much espresso. Harry buys weed off a random guy despite the posters everywhere warning tourists against buying because it could literally be oregano. But they sit on a patio listening to fado, which she doesn’t mind but Harry hates. She drinks wine that’s inexpensive but delicious, and Harry has one of these beers they see people drinking all over the place. They go to a lookout point and smoke together and he tries to teach her to blow smoke rings, but she’s hopeless. 

Sintra takes her breath away. The palaces they visit are so beautiful she wonders why she can’t just stay here and never go home. Harry wonders out loud how hard it could be to move here.

He shows her a photo, later, of her on the grounds of one of the palaces, it in the background. She’s in her own head (she knows she was thinking of him and this trip and the fact they only have 10 days left before they’re to go back to the US). She’s looking downward, her hair a curtain and the sunlight reflecting off her highlighter. 

He protests when she pockets the picture. “You planning on building a shrine?” she teases. 

Harry kisses her hard, his hand pressing against the small of her back to hold her close. “Can’t help myself,” he says, and maybe he’s talking about the photos or the kiss. She doesn’t ask him to clarify.

-

They flip a coin to decide between Amsterdam and Italy. He wants the former, she wants the latter. It lands on Italy, so she offers best two out of three. She still wins, but it feels more fair. Harry’s been to Italy before, with his family when he was younger. She promises him it’ll be better this time. 

“Why’s that?” he asks as they pack their things to go to the airport. 

Allie presses herself against his back, hand sliding down over the front of his pants and tugging his earlobe with her teeth. 

“Sex with me, and you’re old enough to drink?”

Harry moans like she might be right. 

The first night, they order three pasta dishes to share between them, plus bread and calamari. Allie moves her foot up his leg beneath the table when he stares at her as he drinks his wine. He tells her to be careful and she raises her brow as if to ask what he’s going to do about it. 

He presses her into the mattress once they’re back in the room, hands under her dress tugging at her underwear. Allie likes the way he’s not always delicate with her. 

They smoke a joint as they walk home one night after venturing out for gelato, and Harry puts his arm around her when some guys nearby are looking at her and saying something in Italian. In their hotel room, she realizes she’s more high than she thought she was, sits straddling his stomach and tries to count the freckles on his nose. He keeps trying to talk to her and making her lose count. 

“Who knew I’d finish my masters early and then immediately spend the summer falling for Allie Pressman in Europe?”

She laughs, shakes her head, sets her hand on his chest. “You’re high.” He laughs beneath her, the way his torso shakes feeling too good between her thighs. “You’re not falling for me.”

Harry slides his hands up hers, then rests them on her wrists. “I’m not?” he asks. She doesn’t know what to say. Can she really challenge it? He sounds pretty sure of himself. But then, he usually does, doesn’t he? “What is it, then?”

“I’m really good in bed.” She grins at him, proud of her quick answer, and Harry just nods, eyes going a little dark. 

“That’s true.”

“And you like the way I look.”

“Also true.” He tugs her wrists so she’ll lean down, then turns them easily so she’s on her back and he’s leaning over her. Her hair is in her face, but he brushes it out of the way, looking down at her like he really...oh shit. “I’m not lying,” he says softly. 

She has no idea what to say. She likes him a lot, too. She’s had the thought, in the last week or so, that she likes him more than she’s liked anyone in ages. And that sometimes when he looks at her she feels like she’s overwhelmed. They just really get along, and they’ve had a lot of deep talks, too, and she feels like she knows him better than she ever thought she would, and she likes what she’s learned. She likes this person. She wants more of him.

He’s kissing her, and she’s fumbling for the camera off the nightstand. She opens one eye to make sure it’s pointed at least somewhat towards them, and Harry laughs against her lips when he hears the shutter. 

“For your shrine,” she teases. 

He nods, says, “Thanks,” and then fits himself between her thighs. 

Allie doesn’t want to go home.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "I hate the beach but I stand in California with my toes in the sand. Use the sleeves of my sweater, let's have an adventure, head in the clouds but my gravity's centered. Touch my neck and I'll touch yours, you in those little high-waisted shorts."

He takes a year off after high school, because he’s fucked up, but not so fucked up that he can’t tell that if he doesn’t get his shit together now, it’s going to be a problem. He’s got to get over his dad dying before he can get out of here for good. And it will be for good; he doesn’t plan to stick around and have a life here. Fuck that. 

Being the only guy in town from his graduating class, the only person who didn’t leave to go to school makes him feel like a fucking loser, okay? And when Cassandra Pressman dies of a heart attack in October, Harry goes to her funeral and wonders how she was the better of the two of them, the one who had her life in order and could leave, and she still ended up dead. Him, with all his issues and anxiety is still here. Not that he wishes he wasn’t, it just fucks him up a little.

He doesn’t intend to strike up a conversation (a friendship?) with Allie, but in December, she’s walking alone in the dark in the snow, and he’s not enough of a dick to just drive past without stopping to make sure she’s okay. She gets into his car when she sees who’s stopped, leans her head back and doesn't put her seatbelt on. This is the first time he thinks maybe they have something in common. She asks if he knows where she can get something to take that might make her feel less. His answer is yes, but he lies and says no. To save her, or something. Maybe. 

The first time they fuck, she comes to his place with tears in her eyes, saying something about finding a letter from her dead sister. Allie takes her clothes off and gets into his bed, and he knows it’s probably a bad idea, but it feels good for both of them and Allie stays all night, pressed up against him in his bed until her phone starts ringing off the hook in the morning and she mutters a curse, gets dressed, kisses him fast and says, “Thanks for the sex,” before leaving. 

The anniversary of his dad’s death, she shows up with flowers for his mom, as if his mom knows who she is. Allie tells Harry she’s been using him as a distraction, so she can return the favour if he wants. He says he doesn’t feel like having sex, and Allie just shrugs her shoulder and says, “I have other talents.” It’s stupid and funny and cute and it makes him laugh. They end up watching a few episodes of The West Wing until he kisses her lazily because he thinks she looks hot in his bed and it seems a shame to waste that. 

Allie tells him he’s giving her mixed messages. He doesn’t know if she means just today, or overall. He tells her she can take whatever she wants. She seems to think about this, gives him a little smile that’s too hot for her own good, and says, “So can you.” 

They spend Valentine’s Day in her house, in her bed, because her parents go away for the weekend and leave her on her own. Harry, feeling stupid and a little smug on the back of her glowing review of how he just was in bed, reaches for a pink highlighter off her desk and asks if he can draw a heart or something on her skin. Allie calls him lame, but moves her hair off her back and Harry gets a little fascinated with the way her skin tightens when he passes over a place that’s a little ticklish.

In April, she confesses she likes him. She sounds conflicted about it, which makes sense. “Cassandra would’ve fucking hated this,” she tells him, and Harry doesn’t know what to say, so he just shrugs his shoulder. Cassandra’s not here to comment. He’s not sure why it should matter, but he knows it’s not that simple, either.

“I like you, too, Allie,” he tells her, and she shakes her head like she doesn’t believe him, which sort of pisses him off. So he reaches for her hand, draws the tip of his finger along the scar she has on her palm from when she was a kid and dropped a glass when she was emptying the dishwasher. (He knows about all her scars. Maybe it’s weird to have a favourite, but this is his.) “A lot.”

“How much?” she asks, and he gets the impression it’s really important he find the right answer. 

Not knowing what else to say, he replies, “Too much,” with the little grin he knows she likes. She rolls her eyes, but straddles his lap. 

She goes to prom with Becca, as friends, or whatever, in dresses of different shades of blue. She sends him a picture of her getting ready, then shows up at his place afterward, lets him tug down the zipper and wonder - though he doesn’t say anything out loud - if she’d wanted him to be her date, or something. 

The road trip is his idea. He just asks if she wants to get out of here, a couple days after graduation when she’s talking about this summer feeling like a waste of time keeping her from just moving to New York already. 

(She’s going to NYU. He’s going to Columbia. They haven’t talked about that.) 

California is her idea. She’s never been before, and Harry has, and doesn’t like it, but Allie gives him puppy dog eyes or whatever and says, “Please?” and he can’t think of a reason not to say yes, other than he like, doesn’t want to go and could throw a dart at the map and pick a better place. 

Whatever. 

And they could fly, but Allie opens her notes app to make a list of things to do in preparation to leave West Ham, and says, “You have a fast car, right?” when he asks what she has in mind. He sort of figures they’ll drive as far as Pennsylvania, or something, and then she’ll want to turn around and go home. 

He shouldn’t underestimate her. The rebellious streak she developed when her sister died is hot, but he hasn’t figured out a way to tell her so just yet. How’s he supposed to articulate that without sounding like an asshole? He feels like he’s been a primary beneficiary of her behaviour; he doesn’t want it to end.

In Ohio, they stop at a roadside motel when he gets tired and she says she’d rather not die trying to get to nicer accommodation. She gets them a bunch of shitty food from vending machines and bets him $5 she can get them some beer. He’s afraid she’s gonna get fucking murdered, or something, so he keeps his eye on her as she crosses the parking lot towards a middle aged couple sitting outside their room with a cooler. Allie walks back with a 6 pack of some shitty beer, looking way too proud of herself. They don’t even drink them all. She has one and he has one and they leave the rest in the room when they leave in the morning. 

She wants to see every roadside attraction. He wants a baked good from every place they stop. It takes them four days to even make it as far as they thought they'd get in just two. Allie talks to her parents, tells him everything is okay. She makes him talk to her dad, too, and he echoes that they’re fine. His mom texts once.

Allie buys postcards and shotglasses and takes a lot of pictures. Harry answers questions about his car in most places they stop. Allie makes a different playlist for every day and some of them are so fucking bad he threatens to revoke her DJ privileges. She plays with his hair as he drives sometimes. His hand sits on her thigh, her skin warm under his palm and making him feel alive.

In Denver, everything is beautiful and she’s no exception. She buys these stupid heart shaped glasses and insists they find a barbecue joint. She’s wearing flip flops and shorts and a yellow and white baseball tee shirt she stole from him in like, March. 

Harry tells her he loves her when she’s got barbecue sauce on her lip. She doesn’t talk to him for six hours. They’re lying in bed in the dark and he’s regretting all of this. Getting close to her, sleeping with her, this stupid fucking trip.

“You can’t love me. I’m a human disaster.”

Harry shouldn’t laugh, but he does. He looks over at her in the dark. She’s still staring at the ceiling. “Too bad,” is what comes out when he finally speaks. 

She says nothing more, but turns towards him, slides her hand across his hips and lets out a sigh like she thinks they’re sort of fucked, too.

Vegas is fucking ridiculous. He hates it. Allie does, too. Harry almost gets in a fight with some asshole on the strip who offers her a spot in some amateur stripping competition, then grabs her hand when she says no thanks. Allie’s pressing her hands against Harry’s chest, looking at him with fire in her eyes, as he tells this piece of shit to back off and leave her the fuck alone. 

She holds his hand til they’re back at the hotel. 

“My hero,” she says against his lips, her hand working open the button of his jeans. 

“You like that?”

She nods, nips at his bottom lip with her teeth. 

He’s fucking crazy about her. 

She tells him quietly, in the morning, that it’s Cassandra’s birthday. Harry thinks maybe this whole trip was just her escaping her parents and that house so she didn’t have to be there for this. Instead of driving to L.A. today, he says they should order a bunch of room service and stay in all day, and she can be sad or pissed or whatever she needs to be, and they’ll leave tomorrow. He even offers to leave the room if she wants to be alone. She asks him to stay. She eats chocolate covered strawberries and Belgian waffles for breakfast, pulls open the blinds and starts making out with him. Harry, predictably, goes along with whatever she wants. 

She’s quiet when they leave. Her playlist for the day is a bunch of slow songs about feelings. He gets it. Harry holds her hand over the gear shift. She draws a letter A on the back of his hand with her thumb over and over. She doesn’t look him in the eye. 

The wind blows her hair around when she gets out of the car at the beach. He watches her walking, not bothering to wait for him. He realizes he doesn’t want to go back to New Ham with her and just pretend they’re nothing more to each other than a distraction. He realizes he doesn’t want to go to New York and pretend they don’t know each other and none of this ever happened. He realizes that even though he hates California, he doesn’t want to miss out on being here with her. 

When he catches up to her on the beach, her hands are in her hair, her shirt riding up and her shorts barely covering the curve of her ass. She looks good. She always looks good. 

Harry stands next to her, looking out at the water. 

“Doesn’t that make you feel miniscule?” she asks. Harry breathes a laugh. Sure. She turns, looks at him. He keeps his eyes on the water. “What are you afraid of, Harry?”

“Everything?” He grins, sliding his eyes towards her. She wants him to be serious. (He’s not sure he isn’t, but still.) “You.”

Allie runs her hands down his arm until she’s got his hand in both of hers. “Me too.” He doesn’t know what that means. That she’s afraid of herself, or that she’s afraid of him? “But if we love each other, maybe we’ll figure it all out.”

Harry squeezes her hand. “Oh, we love each other now?” he asks, brow raised. 

Allie laughs, smiles, turns so she’s walking backwards towards the water and pulling him with her. She stops just before their toes hit the surf, throws her arms around his neck. “You make me feel like I’m a whole person,” she says, and then seems to feel like that’s foolish or something. It isn’t. He gets it. He gets it. 

Harry kisses her, puts his hands on her hips, and laughs when the water hits her feet when she’s not expecting it, making her squeal.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: emergency & clothes

“I’m so sorry for this,” she says as soon as he answers, and like, when your ex girlfriend calls you on the phone after not talking for four months and starts the call with an apology, you kinda start thinking something fucked up is about to happen. Or already has. 

“Allie?”

She lets out an annoyed huff. Which bothers him. “I know you saw my name on the screen.” Yeah, her name and her face, actually. Which...he rarely needs a reminder of how attracted he’s always been to her. “I need you to come pick me up at the hospital.” 

His fucking heart stops, maybe. He thought she was just calling him to ask to come pick up the last of her shit. There’s a box of cosmetics and whatever under his bathroom sink that he texted her about a month ago and hasn’t gotten a reply. 

“What?”

“I’m...I kinda got hit by a cab? I’m fine. Mostly. I just…” She sighs. Harry tries to force himself to breathe. Like, they’re broken up, but he still cares about her. The idea of her getting hit by a car is…

“Where?” he asks, and knows his voice is too rough. Too full of...He’s holding back his emotions and she knows him well enough to hear it. 

He seriously thought he’d be the last person she’d call for help. Seriously, the last time they saw each other, she had tears in her eyes and he’d said something mean for the sole purpose of being hurtful, and she’d told him to go fuck himself. They’re not on good terms.

“Sinai West.” She pauses but he doesn’t say anything. He’s trying to think of how long it’ll take to get there. “They just won’t let me go without someone to take me home, and...”

She doesn’t have anyone else. 

(She does, obviously. She’s got friends and people but she doesn’t have anyone she trusts. He thinks. Actually, he knows. She told him that once before. But he thought maybe things had changed in the last four months.)

“I’ll be there,” he says. He’s already got Lyft open on his phone. 

“Okay,” she breathes out, then sounds like she might be crying, or something. “Thanks, Harry.”

Harry’s relieved by the soft way she says his name. Like maybe she doesn’t hate him as much as he’s been thinking. It’s messed up that he’s so worried. It’s messed up that his heart’s racing at the thought of seeing her and making sure she’s really okay.   
The entire way to the hospital, he wants to call her and ask more questions. Did she talk to the police? Did they charge the driver? How badly is she actually injured? 

He gives her name at the emergency desk and says he’s here to pick her up. He can’t stop his hands from shaking. He’s told she’s in a bed down the hall to the left and when he walks over and sees her, he’s immediately angry and also feels like he might puke. 

When she said she was mostly fine, she was fucking lying. Because she’s got a gash on her forehead that’s covered with those little sticky stitch things, and her arm is in a cast, and there’s bruising on her cheek. Her shoulder’s all scraped and her shirt is ripped. She looks guilty, at least. But also like she might cry. Harry deflates a little and walks over. 

“What the fuck, Allie?” he asks, and she winces when she tries to sit up more in the bed. 

He sighs. She always fucking does this. She plays martyr and doesn’t want to show weakness. He knows why, but he thinks it’s bullshit. She never lets her guard down. Not even with him. Until she’s pushed to the limit and has a breakdown. That shit drives him insane. He’s not a pillar of mental health, but he thinks he’s miraculously got better coping mechanisms (now…) than she does. 

“I’m okay,” she says, and then looks him in the eye and it’s like she’s pleading with him to not make a big deal about this.

“You got hit by a car.”

“And only have a broken wrist, two broken ribs, a concussion, and these scrapes.”

His eyes narrow. Is she making jokes right now? Seriously? “This isn’t funny,” he tells her lowly, and he sees her bottom lip tremble. He knows her, okay? She’s probably been trying to hold it together since it happened. 

“I didn’t want to scare you,” she admits softly, and Harry blows out his breath and sits down in the chair next to her. The way she just said that makes it sound like she was unsure if he’d actually care enough to be scared. That pisses him off, too. 

He wants to hold her hand, but he doesn’t. They just sit there quietly until the discharge nurse comes in with paperwork and a prescription and asks how far they’re going. Harry gives his cross streets without even thinking about it, but Allie doesn’t correct him, either. The nurse says Allie needs to rest for a couple days (yeah, no shit) and can take this medication for the pain. She says the concussion, too, means Allie shouldn’t sleep tonight for long periods of time and he should wake her up to check on her. He follows all the instructions and nods along and she gives him a pamphlet on concussion care, and then Allie’s signing the release forms and getting out of bed carefully, holding her left side with her good hand. Fuck. 

They get into a Lyft and her hand sits on his thigh. She doesn’t slide over all the way. He thinks it’s because she’s in pain. He doesn’t mind having her closeby anyway. She also isn’t talking to him, which feels weird, but he’s not saying anything either. What the hell do they have to talk about? They broke up because everything got difficult and heavy and she cares too much about what people think and doesn’t like that her family doesn’t want her with him. That’s not the only reason, but it was the thing they fought about most, and the thing they were fighting about when he said, “Well maybe we should just break up, then.” 

She’s always called him a hot head. Maybe if that wasn’t true, he wouldn’t have fucked things up so badly. 

“Go sit down,” he tells her once they’re inside his apartment. They’d filled her prescription at the pharmacy downstairs. There’re only 12 pills in here, just enough for her to manage her pain, and it’s barely stronger than Tylenol, which he thinks is sort of bullshit. But he didn’t miss the way Allie was looking at him, either, like she wasn’t sure he should be around the meds, or something. Which he doesn’t like, either, because it’s been fucking years, okay, and he’s not...He wouldn’t take pain pills away from her. Like, does she think that little of him? 

“Harry,” she calls as he fills a water glass for her. He looks over, not liking the way her voice just sounded. She’s sitting, but not leaning back. “This…” She tugs at her shirt, which is ripped and bloodied and making his stomach turn thinking of the visual of her getting literally hit by a car. “Can I borrow a shirt?”

He nods fast, then heads to his bedroom. He figures a button down is probably better than something that has to go over her head. But he wants her to be comfortable. He grabs a plain black hoodie he only ever wears in the middle of winter when he’s at home. She’s on the sofa trying to pull her shirt up over her head, but she lets out a little yelp and stops. Harry grinds his teeth and grabs scissors from the kitchen and sits down on the coffee table. 

Allie pouts. “I loved this shirt.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he says without thinking, and reaches for the hem and starts to cut. He doesn’t want to stare at her body, but there are bruises all down her left side, and then her breasts in her black bra, and it’s such a mix of good and bad he doesn’t know what to think. He carefully helps her pull it down over her arms so she doesn’t have to twist so much, then reaches for the hoodie and helps her into it, zips it for her. 

“I forgot how tender you can be,” she says, and blinks heavily. He wonders if it’s the concussion talking. Harry gives her a little smile. He’s holding her bloody shirt in his hand and wants to get rid of it. “I shouldn’t have.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, and then she leans back on the sofa, shifts so she’s lying down and her broken wrist is resting over her stomach. “What do you need me to do?” 

She gives him this soft little look like she appreciates him, or something, and then asks, carefully, “Can you call my parents?” He opens his mouth to argue - they really fucking hate him, okay? - but she cuts him off. “They’ll appreciate it. I just...can’t deal with talking to them right now. My head’s pounding.” He’s not gonna even hint that she might be pulling his leg, and pulls out his phone. She looks at him curiously. “You still have their number?” He shrugs, trying to make it seem like not a big deal. Like he just hasn’t gone through his contacts, or something. Allie smiles a little, eyes blinking slowly. “Okay, Harry.”

Her dad answers. He sounds surprised to hear from Harry. Then terrified of the news, even though Harry leads with the fact that Allie is fine and good and here with him and not alone. He never thought that’d be a comfort for this man, but guess shit changes. Then Jim wants to talk to her, and Harry looks at her and lies through his teeth, says she’s sleeping right now. Which he sort of feels like crap about, but whatever. He’s got more interest in being true to her than he does her dad. Then her mom is crying and on the phone and Harry answers all her questions the best he can. He promises he’ll have Allie call them tomorrow, he just knew they’d want to know and he wanted them to know she’s okay. And fuck yeah, he’s taking credit for this. If she threw him under the bus and made him do the uncomfortable thing, he’s absolutely going to try to make himself look good in the process. 

Her parents actually thank him. 

Harry asks her what she wants for dinner, and she asks for ramen from the place two blocks away that she’s always loved. Harry adds gyoza to the order before she even says it out loud, smiles to himself because he knew it would happen. He brings her a pillow from his bed so she’ll be more comfortable, and they’re just not talking about the fact that clearly she’s spending the night. At least a night. Harry’s honestly not sure how he just gets her home tomorrow and they act like this never happened. 

He helps her into his bedroom. She looks shy, or something, and then when he asks what her problem is, she says, “I don’t want to sleep with my bra and jeans on.” 

Right. 

Harry scratches the back of his head. “How do you want me to…?” She winces as she sits on the edge of the bed. 

“Are you being shy?” He tilts his head at her. He’s gotten her naked hundreds of times. He’s never done it when they weren’t together or...something. And he doesn’t appreciate her teasing him for not knowing how to do this. 

So he figures if she’s trying to make him uncomfortable, he can play that game, too. 

“Are you saying you’re cool with me undressing you?” She blushes, looks pretty, and doesn’t look away from him, which is kind of an interesting reaction. He likes it. It’s… 

“Yes.” 

Harry freezes. This is the thing, too. They’re always trying to one-up each other. Allie smiles a little bit, which makes him want her, which is fucked up in about eleven different ways. She has a head injury. She can barely move. Now is not the time to hook up, or whatever. And besides, he doesn’t think they’re two people who can just hook up at this point. There’s too much history. It’s always been all or nothing with her. Always.

“Harry, please?” He clears his throat, and Allie smiles at him like she can tell what he’s thinking. He still doesn’t know how they’re gonna do this, but Allie just pulls down the zipper of the hoodie and wiggles her arm free and he figures he’s gotta help. 

So what if his fingers splay across her ribs, just gently, brushing against the bruising that’s gotten worse even in the last couple hours. And he unclasps her bra, one of his knees on the bed next to her so he’s sort of above her, and she lets out her breath like she’s relieved. And then he’s tugging the straps down gently, carefully over her shoulder where her skin is raw and weeping a little. 

“Do me a favour and never get hit by a car again, yeah?” he says softly, tugging his fingers through the ends of her hair. He helps her with the hoodie again, zips it up to her chest. 

“I’ll do my best,” she says, laughing quietly. She leans back, unzips her jeans. Harry tilts his head back. Allie laughs at him again. He’s torn between not appreciating it, and loving the sound. 

When they’re finally lying side by side in the dark, her in just her underwear and his sweater, him in his boxers and a tee shirt, he can almost hear how loudly she’s thinking. 

She just says, “Thank you,” in the darkness, and he hums and hopes he can get a little sleep before the alarm goes off to make sure she’s still okay in a few hours. Then her hand slips into his beneath the covers and he closes his eyes, wonders what the point was in missing her for the last few months if there’s still this, too. 

But that seems like a problem for tomorrow.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: fashion

He knows her name before she’s even introduced officially. Rather, he’s had a formal introduction to her a few times before. Notably, at a party at the governor’s mansion when they were like, 15 and she’d snuck half a bottle of scotch to the terrace with a few other people and someone had dared her to kiss him, so she did.

Being asked to show her around the school because she’s new here is weird, because he thought she went to St. Mary’s Prep with her older sister. It’s halfway across the state and he figures his parents would’ve told him if the Pressmans were moving closer. (Okay, so he’d met Allie before that party, too. When they were kids and their families sometimes ended up in the same summer town on the coast, because her grandparents and his grandparents and wealth and a bunch of shit he knows about now that he didn’t then, when they were just kids in bathing suits playing on the beach, or whose nannies would get them together to play so they could gossip.) 

The headmistress is telling him Allie’s joining his grade, and could he please be on his best behaviour and show her all the school has to offer? He’s excused from bio and English lit for this, and honestly, he was gonna say yes before Allie even stepped into the room in her plaid uniform skirt, white shirt and blazer. 

She doesn’t make like she knows him, either, except for a dark little look when the headmistress is looking at her computer for Allie’s schedule. 

Then Allie wiggles her fingers at him from hip height, and he smirks and presses his tongue against his teeth, because look, he doesn’t need help getting into trouble, okay? And he knows that this girl is trouble and always has been. (“Too ambitious for her own good,” is what he’d heard his mother say when he was 11. He doesn’t remember what that was in reference to.)

“Thought you were a junior,” he says as they leave the office and step into the empty hallway. 

“Don’t underestimate how intelligent I am.” He raises a brow, reaches for the paper in her hand. She won’t let it go, but he sees the locker number anyway so he can lead them there and she can drop her shit. “I moved up a grade. It’s why I’m here. Couldn’t outshine Cassandra, you know?”

Harry scoffs. In all his memories, she’s been outshining her older sister since she was seven. He sort of thought that might’ve just been him liking her better than Cassandra, who’s always been like, stiff as a fucking board. 

“How’ve you been?” he asks, then points right when they get to the end of the hallway so she knows where to go. His locker is across campus. It’s stupid to be disappointed they’re not closer. 

“Same as always.” He doesn’t know what that means. He knows she knows that, too. “Hey, look.” He stops when she grabs his wrist. He looks down and wonders what she’s doing. “I don’t need the grand tour. I get how schools are set up. Tell me what I really need to know.”

Harry grins, leans his shoulder against the wall and ignores that what he really wants to do is press her against it. 

“I’m the most popular guy in school. Stay away from polo players - water or otherwise. People’re gonna be all over you. Guys, anyway. Girls are gonna hate you because you’re hot. If you stick with me, you’ll be fine.”

Allie smiles at him and puts her hand on his shoulder. “So, same as every school, except you managed to sneak in a way to have me for yourself.”

He’s met his match. Honestly. 

“You could really let me have you,” he suggests lowly, looking at her lips. He remembers the way she’d tasted like scotch. He remembers thinking how hot that was. He remembers wanting to suggest they find an empty room at that stupid fucking mansion. 

Allie rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and shoves at him a little. He laughs and then jogs to catch up with her in the hall. He takes her schedule from her before she can stop him, and likes the way she says his name in protest. They have chemistry and study hall together. She doesn’t seem as happy about it as he is. 

They drop her shit in her locker, and then she asks if they can just sit on the quad and catch up. He doesn’t care as long as he doesn’t get in shit, and she gives him a pissy look and promises she won’t tell anyone he didn’t properly show her every inch of campus.

She sits atop a picnic table next to him, and doesn’t fix her skirt when the wind picks up and blows a corner of it so more of her thigh is showing. He’s distracted by the new skin and Allie says, “Still the same Harry, huh?” as if she’s known all along that when she’s around he can’t take his eyes off her. He kind of doesn’t care that she does. 

-

He’s actually studying during study hall, a week and a half after she’s started. Not that he doesn’t usually. But he’s got a test next week and a paper due and his mom’s watching his grades like a fucking hawk. You’d think getting into Harvard would’ve made her cut that out, but apparently not; still room for him to be an embarrassment or hurt his sister’s chances of getting into this high school. (As if they don’t have the name and the money to make it happen regardless of what Harry does.) 

Allie, for the most part, has hung out with his circle. She’s fit in quickly with Helena, who gets along with everyone, and Becca, who she knows from ‘around’, sorta the same way she knows him. Luke does whatever Helena tells him to, and Clark does whatever anyone tells him to. Gwen’s a snot, but too afraid to be labeled as a bitch to do anything too rude. And Elle’s quiet and Harry doesn’t really know her deal, but Helena brought her to the table with her in May of last year and said, “Elle’s with us now,” and there wasn’t room for argument and Harry didn’t care, anyway. 

Allie comes to his table in the study hall, tucked back between some stacks of reference books, and pushes his texts aside so she can get onto the table. Swear to god, her skin is right there in front of him and she’s looking down at him, and he won’t say he hasn’t thought of going down on her, but this position, the way she’s…

You know what, let him stop. 

“You have a car, right?” she asks. His brow furrows. He does, but so does she. She rolls her eyes. “My dad dropped me off today. Something about getting the brakes checked.”

“What do you want, Allie?” Because yeah, apparently he’s gonna say fuck this test and do whatever she wants to do. He leans back in his chair and Allie crosses her legs, the muscle of her thigh catching his attention. She puts her hand under his chin and forces him to look at her face. He grins instead of looking guilty. Like, she knows what she’s doing, okay? “I’m gonna need to understand the offer.” 

“It’s better than a report on Gulliver’s Travels.” 

“It’s a test,” he corrects lamely. Allie laughs, wraps a lock of his hair around her finger. Fuck, he loves it when girls play with his hair. 

“Take me to lunch?” she asks, then hops down off the table and her skirt flips up and then back down and Harry just tilts his head.

“What’s in it for me?”

She stands behind him, leans down and puts her arms around his shoulders, her lips right next to his ear. 

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want?” she says, and Harry freezes, because he’s literally never had a girl talk like this to him before. He can tell she’s 100% serious, and he likes it so much but he’s also fucking terrified, for some reason. She stands, rests her hands on his shoulders, pats twice, and says, “Meet me by the fountain?” 

And she just knows he’s going to be there, so like. Fuck him, he guesses. He packs up his shit and feels completely out of control until he’s unlocking his car and getting behind the wheel and she’s buckling her seatbelt next to him. 

-

She asks him for help studying for chemistry and then does better than him on the test, and he puts aside his jealousy when she at least looks sheepish about it, or something. 

“I’m really good at tests,” she says carefully, and Harry leans against the locker next to hers and raises his brow. “I didn’t like, lie about wanting your help just to spend time with you.”

Harry gives her a crooked grin and thinks she absolutely did do that. “Sure.”

Allie tugs on his tie, says, “I know I can spend time with you whenever I want. It’s not like you’ll say no.”

She’s laughing as she backs away, and when he says, “Fuck that,” there’s no bite to it. The way she scrunches her face cutely makes him think he really, genuinely likes her. 

-

He invites her over after school, because they’re paired up together for a chem assignment, but also because there’s no one home after school at his house, and he figures it’s a better spot to study than on campus or worse, her place. Where her sister is. And likely her parents. Who are as snotty as his parents, and as such, he wishes to avoid them. 

He leans against his desk in his room and Allie looks at his bookshelf, studying his titles and giving him looks when she passes some. He doesn’t know which she’s got feelings about. He’s not close enough to see. He also doesn’t really care about her opinions on his reading material.

She walks over to him, then, and says, “So. Chemistry.” 

Somehow that sounds so hot and not lame, and Harry just blinks at her and sets his hands on either side of himself against the desk. “Yeah.” Allie smiles at him a little, and this is maybe the least confident he’s seen her since she started his school. And he realizes that it’s not even a lack of confidence, it’s just different when they’re alone. When it’s serious. When they could…

She comes closer, their knees touching, and then moves her right thigh so it’s brushing between his. Harry shifts a little when she gets too close to him, and she’s watching his mouth, and fuck. 

“Harry,” she says, and it’s almost a whine, and he reaches for her hips, pulls her between his legs so they’re flush together, because that feels good, but also because he can’t fucking handle the thought of her continuing to do what she was doing with her thigh like that. 

“Yeah?” he asks softly. His voice is a little lower than he intended, but he watches her eyes slip closed, too. So, she likes that.

“You’re a tease,” she tells him, and he laughs, slips his thumbs up under her shirt. “You know I want you.” 

He watches her mouth, the pink of her lips, just barely parted. She reaches up to push his hair off his forehead. She’s definitely learned he likes that and she’s using it to her advantage. 

“You scare the shit out of me,” he says honestly, and feels the breath she lets out against his skin. “I like it.”

Her eyes are dark and a little wicked and she drapes her arms over his shoulders. “I know,” she confesses. “Are you gonna kiss me, or are you gonna make me do that, too?”

Harry actually rolls his eyes, grins, and then leans in, presses his lips to hers, and fucking can’t get enough of the way she pulls him closer, breathes in, and then lets out this little whimper when he catches her bottom lip with his teeth.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: city & dog

She’s new enough to New York that Central Park is still a destination when she’s got some spare time and the weather’s nice. She doesn’t jog, or just cut through to get home, or anything like that. She parks herself on benches and drinks coffee, or writes in her journal, or sometimes takes photos on her phone. She left work earlier than usual today, and instead of heading home, downtown, she traveled uptown on 7th and through Columbus Circle, past the hot dog cart whose operator both never remembers her and always hits on her. 

She should’ve grabbed dinner, but it’s too hot out to sit outside and eat. Maybe that’s stupid but it’s a thing of hers. When the weather’s hot, she wants AC and coverage from the sun. She doesn’t mind drinks, and occasionally she’ll want to enjoy brunch on a patio, but most times, she…

There’s a dog running straight for her on the walking path, and a guy in a suit on a phone with a leash in his hand who’s got his eye on the dog and looks a little frantic, or something. She kneels down, makes that stupid kissing sound people always make with animals, and the thing comes straight to her, licks her hands and accepts ear scratches and pets. This dog is adorable. A cockapoo, she thinks. She’s still petting it when the guy approaches, slips the leash back on the little hoop on its collar. 

“Sorry about that,” he says, slipping his phone into his pocket. Allie stands upright and smiles one last time at how the dog’s tail is wagging. “Cooper, sit.” The dog does as it’s told, and the guy gives her a once over. “He keeps wiggling free. I need a new leash.”

Allie doesn’t know what to say to this. It seems like too much information for what just happened, but it’s fine, too. 

“No worries,” she says, then looks down again. “Cute dog.” 

She smiles at the guy, refusing to think he could possibly be that handsome, and then takes a step to the side to move around him. 

“Wait,” he says, and reaches out, but doesn’t touch her. She stops, looks at him, but it’s clear - at least to her - that he really doesn’t know what he wants to say. Allie laughs a little. Cooper stands up again, moving between Allie and this guy whose cologne smells expensive and whose tie clip may or may not have a diamond in it. 

“Yes?” she finally prompts.

He laughs softly, looks down, and wraps the leash around his hand once more. “Sorry. I just...wanted to keep looking at you.” She feels her cheeks warm at the compliment, and then Cooper paws at her leg and she leans down to pet the dog, but keeps her eyes on the stranger. “I’m Harry.” 

“Allie.”

“Allie,” he sort of whispers, then looks downward. “The mutt is Cooper, who seems to have an eye for attractive women in the park.”

Allie ticks her brow up, crosses her arms. “If that puts me on some extensive list, I’m not sure it’s as flattering as you’re trying to make it sound.”

His face falls. “Shit. No, that’s not…” He sighs. Grins. Rubs at his jaw. She likes that he’s not actually as smooth as you’d think to look at him. “Let me try again?”

Oh, god. The fact that he’s asking…

“Proceed,” she says with a hand gesture. He chuckles. 

“I’m Harry,” he says again, slower, more deliberate. Then he looks down. “This is Cooper. And you’re?”

“Allie,” she says, humouring him. He smiles, all straight teeth and just maybe, maybe a shadow of a dimple if she squints. 

“Allie. The beautiful woman walking in the park.”

She blinks, tilts her head. “You say that like I’m the only beautiful woman walking in the park.”

He shrugs. “If the shoe fits…” Cooper whines at something. Harry looks down, then reaches with his hand to scratch the dog’s head. “Why don’t we get a drink?”

“What about Cooper?” she asks, and Harry smirks. 

“Cooper’s straight edge, but won’t mind sitting on a patio while we talk.” That is absolutely dorky, and stupid, and she likes it too much, that this guy in these clothes who looks like this isn’t so practiced and rehearsed that it makes her feel like rolling her eyes. 

“I have to be home by 8:00,” she says, which is a lie, but a tactic she uses on most dates because it gives her an out. 8:00 is two hours from now. She should’ve said 7:30. 

He checks what looks like an expensive watch, gives her a soft look that makes her think maybe this could actually be a nice time. “Sounds good. That means we’ll have more to talk about next time.” 

Allie laughs out loud again, likes the way Cooper looks up at her, inspecting the sound, or something. Harry asks what she does and seems to like her answer. She asks what he does and he downplays it. She likes that, too. 

Cooper sits in the shade of their table’s umbrella in the late day sun, occasionally bumping her leg or Harry’s for attention as they share a half litre of wine at this spot Harry said he knows. 

When she drains her glass and says she should be going, she doesn’t mean it and thinks he can tell that, too. But he doesn’t say anything about it, just asks if she wants his number so she can reach out if she wants to do this again. She likes so much that he’s left it in her court that it sort of seals the deal. (Okay, fuck it. The deal’s been sealed since they first sat down and he’d said he’s never met a woman who could ask him such thoughtful questions about his job as an architect. She likes that she seems to be impressing him.) 

They say goodbye on the sidewalk. Harry’s hand rests gently on her upper arm and he leans in to kiss her cheek. She looks up at him through her lashes and thanks him for the drink. 

Cooper whines as she’s walking away. She laughs and turns to look over her shoulder. 

“You train him to do that?” she asks, and Harry grins boyishly, shaking his head. 

“Told you he has good taste. He doesn’t want you to go, either.” 

Strangers are literally watching them, listening, and smiling at this stupid interaction. Allie feels like she’s got a crush. 

“Bye Harry.”

“Bye Allie.” 

She turns back around, smiles, bites her lip and looks upward, then runs across the street when the don’t walk sign is flashing just so she can put more space between them, which, ironically, is actually the last thing she wants to do.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: fake relationship

“You owe me,” he says into her ear, walking up behind her by her car just like she told him to. She jumps, then turns and pins him with a glare, and he looks way too smug for her liking. 

She knows this is a massive favour. She knows she fucked up. She really, really doesn’t need him reminding her all night and hopes he won’t. 

“Did you bring it?” 

Harry rolls his eyes, looking handsome in his suit. God, of course he does. She’s never not thought so. And it’s not the suit, it’s just him. It’s always been this way. Since they met.

He pulls the engagement ring out of his pocket and her breath hitches the way it did when he actually proposed. She doesn’t want to think of the similarities. The way he’d looked a little nervous then and the way he does now, the self-satisfaction slipping away as soon as he reached into his breast pocket. The way his eyes land on hers like he notices the similarities, too. If she let herself, she could absolutely recall every detail of that night in the south of France. 

She knows he does this on purpose: he reaches for her left hand and slips the ring onto her finger the way he did the first time, too. She’d had tears in her eyes, then. She feels like crying now. 

“Thanks,” she says too softly, and he takes a deep breath like he’s bothered, somehow, by that response. She looks at the ring on her hand a moment too long. She knows he notices that, too. “I’m sorry.”

His brow furrows. “For what?” he asks, and now is not the time to think of the entire list of things, so instead she focuses in on the specific thing she’s actually apologizing for. 

“Tonight,” she says. He doesn’t react at all. “I didn’t say anything when it happened...“

He scoffs. “When it happened? When we ended it?”

Yeah, him saying it like that isn’t helping her, either.

“And then it just all spiraled, and Chris asked if you were coming, and I just...I panicked.”

He nods, and she wonders if this happened to him at his work, too. Like, how do you tell your colleagues your engagement is over without making it a big thing and having them pity you eternally? No one except Helena seemed to notice she wasn’t wearing her ring. And even Helena didn’t say anything for weeks. 

“Okay.”

That’s definitely not what she thought he’d say, and she doesn’t know how to carry on the conversation now. Harry just sets his hand on her back and points for the door. She can’t just have this be the last conversation they have before spending the entire evening acting like they’re still together and nothing’s changed or wrong or different. 

“Harry,” she says, turning to him. He’s close, so she sort of bumps into him, and his hand ends up on her hip. He doesn’t move it. She sets her hand on his chest over his jacket, the ring - her ring - catching the light just so. God, she fucking loves this ring. She has since the moment she saw it. “This is going to be okay, right?”

He blinks slowly, looking down at her. He seems almost irritated. Like he’s bothered by the fact she thinks he couldn’t be reasonable at this. That she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to act like a couple anymore. It’s only been two months since they called things off. She doesn’t really know how long it takes to forget how to fit like this with a person. 

“Yeah, Allie,” he tells her, his thumb brushing against her hip through her dress. “It’s going to be fine.” She rubs her lips together, and he grins just a little. “Stop. You’ll mess up your lipstick.”

She’s wearing this colour because she knows he likes it. She did that on purpose. He’s mentioning it because he can tell. She lets the corner of her mouth tick up. She’s trying to ignore wholeheartedly how much she misses him, and how she didn’t fully realize the extent of that until he was like this in front of her. Like they used to be.

He’s perfectly charming and intelligent and lovely to her and everyone else all night, just like they were all expecting, just like she should’ve. When they sit down to dinner, his arm goes around the back of her chair before the starter course comes out, and when he tops up her glass of water without her asking, he gives her a little wink and she thinks she might go crazy. 

There is a list of things she wants to say, apologies, and questions, and all these reminders that they...they’re just good together. But it feels like those words are less useful than this, the easy way they are with each other. Like it’s just the most natural thing in the world. 

At the end of the night, by her car, he leans down to kiss the corner of her mouth, and she thanks him again, and then she’s halfway home before she realizes she’s still wearing her ring. 

She calls him from the car, asks him if he wants to come over and pick it up. 

He says yes. That ends up being not at all what happens. But she’s not upset with the way it goes, either.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: soulmates

“Soulmates,” she states, and Harry closes the fridge door, gives her a look, and opens his sparkling water. He knows she’s going to take it from his hand in minutes, steal a sip. “Fact or fiction?”

“Allie,” he says, tired.

“Debate me!” she says laughingly, and he sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. 

It’s not that he doesn't like her. He likes her a lot. Too much, probably, for someone he’s just supposed to be on this summer trip to Italy with. No, not with. They didn’t come together. They don’t even go to the same university. But the trip is for people studying anthropology, and they’re in this little town in Tuscany, and...No, he doesn’t know why they’ve sort of gravitated towards one another. It could be that they’re the only two Americans here, but he’s not going to lie. His original motivations were not that innocent. She’s hot and he thought it’d be fun to have like, a summer fling with someone if they were gonna be working so closely together, anyway. 

And it is. The fling is everything he thought it’d be. She’s sexy and funny and smart as hell. She also exhausts him, because they approach the work differently and that means she likes to argue with him, and he likes to argue with her. They spent all day today with the supervisor of their project, going back and forth on what they should do next. Allie’d won and they’re doing it her way. Harry doesn’t like not winning, but he also just…

He’s never met someone he could go toe to toe with like her. He likes it, but damn. Can they just watch a fucking movie, or something? 

“Didn’t you get enough of that today?”

She bites her bottom lip, which...Yeah, they don’t do this in the common areas of this house, usually. Unless no one else is home. But Tatia and Khoa are both around somewhere, and he thinks Vincent is, too. Allie coming onto him in the kitchen is…

No, fuck it. They’re not stupid enough to think their housemates don’t know they’re sleeping together.

“Never,” she says, exaggerated. She reaches for his drink. He pretends to be annoyed to share with her. “So, the Greeks thought that humans were originally four-legged, four-armed, two-faced people. Zeus was like - that shit sounds too powerful - and split them so they’d like, go their whole lives looking for their other halves and be all distracted.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “That sounds like bullshit.”

Her brows go up. “Are you really willing to anger the gods? Is Harry Bingham defying Zeus?”

God, he’s tired. He wonders if he could just phone this argument in and let her win and then take her to bed. 

Who’s he kidding? He’s definitely not gonna let her win. 

“So you think the root of all human suffering is people not having found their perfect matches?” She grins, follows him down the hall and out onto the back terrace. It’s his favourite place on the property. He perches himself on the stone wall at the edge, so the sun can hit his face, and Allie hops up, too. “Like, that’s why humans are so fucking useless?”

She laughs. They’ve had that talk before. How small humans are, in the grand scheme of things. 

“It’s a working theory.” He breathes a laugh and reaches over, gently brushes her hair over her shoulder. She changed into this cute dress when they got back an hour ago. He sort of wants to take her on a date. “Maybe the happiest people find their soulmates.”

“That doesn’t track. How many people d’you think said they were soulmates and ended up miserable together?”

She opens her mouth, then closes it. Then, “Okay, well.” He grins a little, thinks she’s cute when she’s fumbling for an argument. He’s noticed it before. (She doesn’t win all the time.) “Obviously there’s a difference between saying you’re soulmates and actually being soulmates.”

“Fair. So how do you know?” 

She gets this look on her face, looks at his mouth, and...Yeah, he’s distracted, too. The sun hitting her skin like that makes her look sort of golden and pretty, and he thinks he could write a fucking essay on the way her hair catches the light in any given situation. 

“I read this book once and the soulmates had marks.” His brow furrows. “Like birthmarks.”

He doesn’t mean to laugh out loud, but he does. This is ridiculous. He gets up off the ledge, puts his arm around her neck and kisses her hair. 

“Come on. You need some carbs. You’re just talking shit now.” She laughs a little, puts both arms around his waist as they head for the driveway to walk into town.

They’re sitting outside the restaurant, her sipping from a glass of white wine and looking a little too good doing it, him rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers as he watches her. 

He notices a freckle on her hand, the one sitting on the table. It’s right next to the knuckle of her middle finger and he reaches out, runs his thumb over it. 

“What?” she asks, and her voice is all low like it gets when she wants him. Which is a lot. Which he likes. 

He holds up his left hand. He has a freckle on the same knuckle, just the opposite side; his is to the right and hers is to the left. 

She leans towards him, looks at him through her lashes as she smiles. 

“Are you convinced yet on the existence of soulmates?” 

He grins, leans back in his chair. He knows she’s just fucking around and has been literally since she brought up the topic. She’s too smart and too practical to actually believe it.

“Who am I to argue Zeus’ will?” he asks. Allie tips her head back, laughs, and then leans up out of her chair so she can kiss him. 

He still thinks the idea of soulmates is bullshit. But he is pretty sure he loves her anyway.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: exes meeting after not talking for years

He met Allie when she was 20 and visiting her sister at Yale for a weekend. They matched on some app and started talking, and she met him for coffee when her sister had class, and to this day he thinks it was the best date he’s ever been on, and not just because she ended up at his place. And look, he wasn’t on those apps to meet a girlfriend, you know? He was just sort of thinking it’d be an easier way to meet people to hook up with. But the thing with Allie was she sort of stuck with him. So he messaged her a couple days later and asked if they could keep in touch. She went to UConn, so it wasn't really hard to keep hooking up. And when they were at her place one night and he wasn’t thinking clearly because she was all distracting, he said he wanted them to be a thing. Which was true.

So they were a thing. For like, a year and a half. She’s still his longest relationship. The one he thought might actually be it. Which scared the shit out of him at the time because he still felt too young for it. But then when he got into grad school in New York and she got into grad school in Chicago… He just thinks they were naive about it and they should’ve called it off then and there instead of acting like they could make it work. The breakup just ended up being messy and painful and he thinks they were too young for that, too. To know how to like, break up with each other gracefully. 

The night they ended it, he found someone else to take home, and Allie found out about it almost immediately, and told him there’s no way he would’ve been able to do that if he’d ever actually been serious about her. Which he thinks is bullshit and made him really, really angry. Like, how fucking dare she? 

They decided not to talk to each other anymore. She left him a drunken voicemail on her birthday that first year. Barely coherent. He deleted it because it made him feel like shit. 

He dated Eloise after that, for a few months until she wanted him to summer in the Hamptons with her family and he felt like it was moving fast. Then there was Autumn, who he knew his mom would never approve of but sort of didn’t care. And Martine, who he met in Spain when he was there for a month after grad school. Not that he’d say he dated her, it was just...It was different.

He starts dating Alexis when he changes jobs. She’s the daughter of his old boss, so it’s a whole fucking thing. 

He calls her Allie once, by accident, and she sort of laughs and says no one’s called her that since she was a kid. Harry hopes she doesn’t notice his change in demeanor. He feels like he’s gonna pass out. 

He breaks up with her a month later because she says something about really just wanting someone to spend the winter with, and he doesn’t feel like being that convenient for her. 

He’s been single a while since. It’s not that he’s bad with women. He’s just hearing it from absolutely everyone that he should start getting serious, and he thinks maybe they’re right. He’s sort of tired of the game.

He’s leaving his office way too late, because he’s just been made junior partner and needs to show he’s worth it. (He knows that’s all in his head. They wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t know he could handle it. But the pressure he puts on himself has always been greater than the pressure anyone else puts on him. He was supposed to meet a friend for a drink, but he cancelled. He could really use a scotch, though. 

When he walks into this place near the office, a place a bunch of them sometimes come to for happy hour, he heads straight for an open spot at the bar and sets his phone on top. He orders a drink and then turns in his seat to look around. 

When he sees Allie sitting at little table with some guy in a suit that’s not as nice as Harry’s, he…

Oh, no. Fuck. He knows that guy. 

Allie catches his eye, too. Harry feels adrenaline course through him. He hasn’t seen her in something close to eight years, but god, she looks so fucking good. 

She turns back to this guy she’s with, pushes her hair behind her ear and ignores Harry. Makes sense. If she’s with her boyfriend or on a date, or something. But god, would she really date that guy? What’s his name? He’s a paralegal who works on the fifth floor at Harry’s firm. They rarely interact but Harry knows he knows the guy’s name. 

When he glances over again - because apparently some things never change and he can’t take his eyes off her - it’s just in time to see the guy get up and walk towards the washrooms. 

Harry grabs his drink and phone and walks over, slides smoothly into the chair across from her and grins at her. She looks nervous, but she’s smiling. Like maybe she’s happy to see him, too. 

“Hi.”

She tilts her head like she thinks he’s being ridiculous. “Hi.” 

“How are you?” he asks. She shifts a little in her seat, crosses her legs and leans her elbows on the table. “You look good.”

She scoffs a little. “I’m doing well. You can’t stay here.”

He grins at her. “Why not?” he asks, and she gives him a look like he’s being an asshole. Which is fine. He sort of is. “Is he your boyfriend?” She doesn’t answer. He can’t tell if she’s communicating a yes or a no with that. “He works at my firm.”

She closes her eyes. “Of course, he does,” she sighs. Harry laughs, which is maybe not nice. “Please, Harry.” 

Yeah, that’s...He’s got some memories he hasn’t thought of in forever that feature those two words and her. When he notices her cheeks are a little pink, he’s wondering if she’s remembering that, too. 

“Okay,” he says, and then pulls out his wallet, grabs a business card. “We should get a coffee. Catch up.”

She’s just looking at him from under her lashes. He watches her tuck his card into her bag before he goes back to his seat at the bar. He really tries not to spend any more time looking at her over there. It’d be creepy, for one. It also wouldn’t help him. 

Look, it’s not like he’s spent all this time pining over her. Jesus. He thinks of her pretty rarely. Once in a while someone will mention her - usually his mother, who loved her. But he doesn’t wander around all the time thinking about her or any of his other exes. Who does that? 

He’s finishing his drink and thinking of settling up when Allie gets onto the stool next to him and flags down the bartender. Harry’s just staring at her and she folds her hands on the bartop and won’t look at him. 

“Let’s do a drink instead of coffee,” she says. Harry grins and gestures for a refill after the bartender has taken her order. 

At the end of the night, when it’s late and she’s telling him she has to get home because she has patients in the morning, she hugs him outside the bar and presses her lips to the corner of his mouth. She’s looking right at him when she pulls away and rsays, “I’ll call you.”

He believes her.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> star-crossed lovers

His ancestors founded the town. Harry’s got a really complicated relationship with this knowledge. He knows enough about colonialism and the kinds of shit white people were doing in the time period of the founding to know there’s really not a lot to celebrate. Which is why he tends not to. Since he was 18 and could reasonably say no, he’s been avoiding founder’s day activities and festivals and all that shit. This past year was a big one. His mom’s still barely talking to him, which is sort of rich. It’s not even her side of the family whose names are on streets and buildings and literal fucking statues. His dad’s been dead for eight years and she still wants the attention of having been married to him, even if she’s been fucking someone else for nine years. Yeah, he’s not pleased with the math. 

He comes home for his sister’s graduation. He hasn’t been home since Christmas. Mostly because it doesn’t feel like home. It feels like the place he grew up. That's a notable distinction.

He’s pulling up to the coffee shop when he sees Allie Pressman leaving with a reusable mug in her hands, ripped jeans low on her hips and a loose crop top showing glimpses of her stomach. She looks hot. He still feels guilty when he thinks so. That’s always been the case, not that it's ever stopped him.

He doesn’t totally understand the history, but it’s something about land in the early 1900s and someone swindling someone else and the other reacting badly. The story he’s heard, his family was doing the swindling, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The Pressman family had a huge farm outside of town, and his family bought it out from under them in some shady deal to expand the town limits. Harry’s sure he could find official records in the archives if he wanted to. He doesn’t. 

All he knows is that the feud between their two families is bad enough that their schools always used to make sure none of them - him, Allie or Cassandra - had any of their classes together. He thinks the entire fucking town held their breath when he and Cassandra went up against one another for student council president. Cassandra had won. Harry remembers the way his mom had sucked her teeth at him when she heard the news. 

He also remembers flirting with Allie - and her flirting back - any time they were alone and no one else was around. Like when he was 16 and got his car and she told him he looks kind of hot driving. When he was 17 and backstage during play rehearsals and he told her he liked how she looked in all black. When he was 19 and on break from school and at this party and she’d grabbed his shirt and kissed him. And when he was 20 in New York and he saw her on campus and they talked for an hour on the steps of some building before she told him she had to go before she was late for class and before their grandparents turned in their graves. 

He thinks Allie sees him, too. She’s smiling as she walks away. 

The next time he sees her, it’s in the city. He can almost barely believe it. He’s at this bar with dancing and cheap drinks because it’s his friend’s birthday and he didn’t really have a choice. Seeing Allie in this dress that looks a little out of place for the vibe of this bar throws him for a loop. She has a drink in her hand and her hair’s all wild, and when she spots him, she gives him a look that is so hot it might kill him. 

He doesn’t really want to be on the dance floor, but he’s walking towards her and she’s walking towards him and they sort of meet in the middle, just at the edge of the floor. Harry sets his hand on her hip when she leans up to say something close enough to his ear that he can hear.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that.”

Harry laughs. He doesn’t know what the fuck that means. “Why not?”

She just pulls away, looking at him darkly. She shouts, “Dance with me.” 

He really doesn’t want to, so he shakes his head and she just pouts and goes back to her group of friends. Probably for the best this way. 

When he’s outside wishing he had a cigarette because he smokes very occasionally and only when he drinks, Allie wraps her arms around him from behind. He knows it’s her because he can smell her perfume. He glances over his shoulder at her. 

She moves to stand in front of him, puts her hands up on his chest and says, “You should come home with me.”

He knows his brow goes up. “That right?” She nods once, emphatically. He wonders how drunk she is. He’s not...There’s no way he’s going to sleep with her if she’s drunk. “How come?”

She just says, “Who’s gonna stop us?” as if the only reason she’s never proposed this in the past is that someone else was telling them not to. Honestly, he sort of agrees. “Do you want to?”

And that’s the hard question. Well, no. It’s the easy question. He wants to. Saying yes is simple. 

“We shouldn’t.”

Allie tilts her head. “That wasn’t the question, Harry.”

They stay up too late, lying on her bed in her little apartment. They’re not kissing - they haven’t kissed - but they’re touching. Constantly. She leans against him, or sits up but leaves her hand on his torso. He plays with her hair and the bottom of her dress, whichever is closest. She makes him laugh. She makes him want her. She tells him about Cassandra, about her parents, about her job. She asks what he was doing in West Ham recently. He asks how she got so fucking pretty. 

He kisses her when he’s leaving, when he’s got her number in his phone and thinks he wants to stay.

Three days later, she’s in his bed, fingers dragging over his throat as she comes down, her breath in his ear. She starts laughing. He joins her, presses his face into her shoulder. They’re so screwed. She tells him she’s thought about this so many times. He can barely handle knowing that. 

Next time he’s in West Ham, he goes to the archives, drops his name and basically has access to every bit of recorded town history he can get his hands on. Apparently, the land feud came to a head with the disappearance and suspected murder of someone who would’ve been Allie’s great uncle. Harry thinks that even though it’s been a couple months of him and Allie getting to know each other, sleeping together, their families are never going to accept this. He knows his mom won’t. He doesn’t see how Allie’s parents would. When he tells her what he’s learned, she says she already knew. Which makes sense; her family would’ve given her this piece of info and his tried to hide it. 

She whispers it one night over drinks. They’re at this crowded place near her office and she leans across the table, her drink cradled in her hands and asks, “What if we fall in love?” as though it’s a definite possibility at this point and they need to decide if they’re going to let it happen. 

He just asks, “What if we do?” like some kind of challenge or encouragement that they just say fuck everything else. 

She takes his hands in hers. She asks the server for the bill. They go to her place.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> parents meeting when they take their kids to class

“No,” she says, hands gripping the wheel. “No, no, no.” 

She generally tries not to have any sort of aggression or road rage when Willow is in the car, but she has really had it up to here with people who don’t see the drop off zone as a drop off zone. Like, the signs say not to get out of your car. They say to let kids out and get the fuck out of the way. (Well, they don’t say that, but those are still the rules.) 

The car ahead of her goes into park and the driver’s side door opens. The guy walks around to the back seat and pulls the door open, and this little boy with hair just like his dad’s - if that’s in fact the dad - hops out. 

If this were just some asshole in traffic, she’d roll down her window and yell. She’s not going to do that. 

“Who’s that?” she asks Willow, pointing towards the boy. She watches Willow look, then shake her head. 

“I don’t know.”

It’s a small, private school in Connecticut. The fact that neither Allie nor Willow knows either child or parent is a bit surprising. 

Willow unbuckles her seatbelt and reaches for the door handle. “Bye, sweetie. Love you,” Allie says just like every morning. “Dad’s picking you up tonight, remember?” 

“I remember. Love you too.” 

Just as Willow’s closing the door, the guy who’d parked in front of her starts walking back to his car. As Allie goes to pull out, he catches her eye and waves a little, like he’s acknowledging he’s blocked her in. So he knows he’s not supposed to do that and did it anyway. Asshole. 

-

The second time it happens, it’s the same thing, only a week later. She doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just pull off into the parking lot. Probably because he’s entitled and doesn’t want to have to walk an extra 100 feet, or something. At this point, it’s become a topic of conversation in the parents group. Well, the cool parents group. The one she’s part of with Grizz, Becca and Will. Becca’s said ‘Hot Daddy’ keeps doing this and someone needs to take him to task. 

Allie catches him one morning when she was late leaving the house with Willow because of a whole mess about a spirit day Allie’d totally forgotten about and Willow hadn’t reminded her of. So she’d had to figure out a ‘crazy hair day’ look in minutes, and that shit just is not her forte. 

Anyway, it means there aren’t really any cars dropping off anymore, as Willow runs towards the school doors shouting, “Love you, mom!” over her shoulder. 

The guy’s coming back to his car and Allie knows she can’t just not say something. 

“Hey,” she says, and she sounds mean, but whatever. 

He smiles, says, “Hey,” like…like he’s happy to be talking to her and she didn’t just sort of bark at him.

She doesn’t understand. 

“Can you stop doing this?” she asks, gesturing to his fancy black car where it’s parked just in front of her sensible sedan. He tilts his head. “It makes it kind of hard for everyone else. The parking lot is right there.”

He seems to want to argue. She wonders what he does for a living. Not that it matters. “Okay,” he says instead, and nods, slips one hand into his pocket. “I’m Harry Bingham.”

She really doesn’t need his name. 

(She really doesn’t need his name, because she’s noticed he’s looked her up and down and it feels good and she is just...She’s not going to do this. She’s not.) 

“Allie.”

He laughs a little. “Allie have a last name?”

Okay, that’s kind of cute. She shakes her head, knows she’s giving him too hot a look when she says, “No.” 

She definitely sees the way he looks at her left hand when she reaches up to push her hair off her face. (She definitely did the same thing with him the other day when he’d set his hand on his kid’s back.)

“Noah’s got some pretty serious anxiety,” he tells her, and she didn’t ask, but she doesn’t mind listening. “This is all new. We just moved here. It’s...a lot.”

“Oh,” she says quietly, feeling genuinely sympathetic. “Okay. Well, I really hope it gets better.”

Harry smiles at her nicely, like he’s a little touched this is her reaction. “Thanks. I’ll stop getting in your way.”

He pulls his keys from his pocket and starts towards his car. 

Allie gets back into hers and waits til he’s pulling away before starting the engine again. At the edge of the driveway, when his left blinker’s on and her right one is on, he hangs his arm out the window and waves like he knew she was looking at him. Shit. 

-

They show up mid morning, and she has to sign Willow in at the office with the appointment notice from the dentist. Willow goes off to class as Allie goes through this process. When she walks out of the office, Harry is there with his son, who’s...god, he can’t be more than six, and he looks like he’s been crying. Allie’s as concerned as she is about any crying child that isn’t her own. 

“Hey,” she says softly, gives the boy a smile she hopes is kind, and then meets Harry’s eyes. “Coming or going?”

He purses his lips. “Going,” he says, and god, she thinks there’s something so sad about these two she sort of wants to take care of them. She nods, because she doesn’t know what else to say, and then moves to head out to her car in the parking lot. “Hey, we’re…” She turns around. He looks nervous, or something. “We’re going to get some hot chocolate.” Allie smiles, crosses her arms. “You wanna come with us, Allie No Last Name?”

She wants to laugh, but manages not to, checks the time on her phone in her hand. She’s got the whole day off because she usually does this when Willow has appointments; takes advantage of it and schedules some ‘me’ time. She’s got a manicure scheduled for 2:00 but that’s hours away. 

Harry’s handsome enough that she’s saying yes before even really considering how weird this is. 

She follows them to Starbucks in her car, and Harry buys her a mocha and Noah’s a very sweet, quiet little boy. She tells him about Willow, how she’s a couple years older and had all the same teachers he does, and that they’re all really kind and school is a nice place to spend the days, and asks him who’s in his class. Harry thanks her when Noah’s distracted with Harry’s phone. 

She gives Harry her last name when she gives him her number.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roommates

It goes like this:

Allie moves in with Kelly when they’re in undergrad, this two bedroom apartment in desperate need of a removation. Their majors are different, but they lived on the same floor of their dorm, and bonded over their lack of desire to get their stomachs pumped or flunk out. 

Kelly moves in with Harry after dating for a year. They’re stable and he has a house off campus and Kelly’s in love with him. Allie thinks he’s funny and a bit pretentious, but nice. He drives her to the airport once when she has to make an emergency trip to North Carolina to see her grandparents. 

Allie moves in with them when her lease is up because she can’t find a place with the same rent and everything’s gone up in the last two years. Harry says he’ll rent her the room for way less. She doesn’t want his charity. He says he shouldn’t have to explain to an MBA candidate that it’s just good sense to charge less for a shared space. 

Kelly breaks up with Harry when she finishes her masters and moves to Seattle. Allie never learns all the details, but she almost begs Kelly not to go. Harry’s moping and depressed and she thinks it’s going to be awkward as fuck to live with her friend’s ex. Kelly reminds her she and Harry are friends, too. 

Allie gives him a week to be a sad asshole. At least to this degree. She pulls the duvet clean off his bed and tells him to get in the fucking shower. 

She forces him to eat toast and eggs and take a multivitamin because the only thing she’s seen him consume in days is coffee. 

“You ever been in love?” he asks, somehow making it sound shitty. Like he thinks there’s no way the answer is yes. 

“Mhm.”

“How’d you handle getting your heart broken?”

Allie wants to tell him she thinks he’s being pathetic, but there’s no way it won’t sound mean. 

She doesn’t think he’s heartbroken. She knows Kelly. She’s lived with these two. She thinks they’ve been phoning it in for ages. She doesn’t actually think his heart was in it enough to be broken. He’s mourning something else, and that’s very valid. 

Maybe she’s a jerk for assuming his feelings and not listening to what he’s actually expressing. 

“I cried a lot and got really angry,” she says honestly. “Then I got over it.”

He scoffs a little. He needs to shave. She doesn’t think he could ever grow a beard that isn’t patchy. It’s a dumb thing to notice. 

“I’ll be alright,” he says quietly.

Allie thinks he’s talking to himself. 

It goes like this:

Harry decides he wants to watch the entire series of Friday Night Lights. Allie has it on DVD. She loves this show. She makes him promise not to watch without her. He doesn’t make fun of her when she tears up. She doesn’t mention when she notices him wipe his eye. 

He starts ordering her a breakfast sandwich with his order every Saturday morning. Sometimes she’s not awake yet but he’ll text her anyway and tell her food is here. He’ll make fun of her hair and her pajamas and tell her how much of a mess she always looks in the morning. She’ll shove at him with her foot as they sit on the couch, take a bite of food and tell him to shut up. 

Kelly calls her, asks her how he’s doing. Allie says he’s fine and it isn’t a lie. He’s gotten a job as a junior associate at an architecture firm. Allie’s started as an analyst at a consultancy. Allie says he’s well out of his funk. Kelly wonders, out loud, how much of that has had to do with Allie. She doesn’t know what that means, but she thinks it means something. She doesn’t ask. 

Harry’s asleep on the couch one Sunday when she gets home from brunch with friends. He was awake when she left. She knows he’s not big on naps. She slams the door behind her just to fuck with him, and he bolts upright with a gasp, looks over at her as she laughs. He’s pretty pissed about it, but she maintains that it’s at least a little funny. 

She goes on a few dates with this guy she meets on Bumble. Harry’d been sitting next to her, his shoulder pressed against hers, when Byron messaged the first time. He’d tried to get her to send messages back that were absolutely just something guys want to hear and not really rooted in anything she was trying to put out there. Harry had called her a square and got bored with the whole process. Allie kept her phone in her hand as Harry put Jeopardy on Netflix.

After their third date, Byron asks why she hasn’t come home with him and why she’s not willing to now. Ugh. She deletes his number as she walks to the metro. When she gets home, she kicks off her shoes and leaves them on the floor by the door like she knows Harry hates, and grabs a beer from the fridge because it’s the easiest thing to drink fast. 

“You’re home early,” Harry says, scaring the shit out of her, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen with his arms crossed.

She laughs humourlessly. Guys are such assholes. “Yep.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “What happened?”

“Not enough, apparently.”

He seems confused, then realization dawns on his face and he takes a breath, walks towards her. He gets a beer, too, and she thinks he’s waiting on her to say more. She’s not going to. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s being genuine. She can tell. She thinks he’s her best friend. She shrugs. “I think Kelly’s dating someone.”

Allie’s surprised and she knows it shows. This is the first she’s hearing of it. 

“Are you okay?”

He shrugs. 

They have too many beers and watch Cinderella on Disney+ because it’s her favourite, and Harry says, out loud, that he doesn’t think he would’ve survived this year without her. Allie doesn’t ignore it, really. She doesn’t respond, though. Not really. She just taps her beer bottle against his and leans her head on his shoulder.

It goes like this:

Allie takes Harry to her holiday party because she doesn’t want to go alone. Harry wears a nice suit and drives and is exactly as charming and impressive as she thought he might be. They’re careful to mention that they’re roommates, nothing more. One of Allie’s coworkers asks her if he’s single. She doesn’t lie, but she feels weird when she says yes. Harry tells her everyone talked to him all night about how great she is. On the way home she tells him about her coworker. Harry just says, “Oh,” like he’s surprised or wasn’t expecting it. It makes her laugh way too hard. 

Allie meets her family in Vermont for a ski trip over Christmas. Harry stays in Boston alone until literally Christmas day, when he drives to see his mom and sister in Connecticut. He texts Allie that his mom wrote him a cheque and that was the extent of his gift opening. He texts her that he misses her. Allie’s sitting by the fireplace in this rented chalet and sighs her relief, knowing that maybe it’s not crazy that she wishes he was here. 

In March, when the weather is just barely warming, Kelly comes to visit. It’s been so long since they’ve seen each other. It’s weird that she’s staying at the house, probably, but her stuff ends up in the spare room and Harry is fine with it. Allie knows, because she’s asked him 400 times. Allie and Harry make dinner the first night. He likes to say he’s a better cook than she is, but it’s not true. She pushes him aside and tells him to pour wine, laughing when he pouts. She tells Kelly they made the dessert together, and all the ugliest bits of the cake are the ones Harry did. He narrows his eyes at her and tells her she’s the worst. She smiles sweetly in return. She and Kelly go for breakfast in the morning, just the two of them, and Kelly asks, “Are you and Harry…?” she doesn’t finish the question before Allie’s saying no. Kelly seems like she’s trying to be delicate when she says, “Maybe you should.”

Harry invests in some fintech startup, and Allie joins the board of a local non-profit. Harry buys champagne to celebrate, though she doesn’t know what it is they’re celebrating. “Feels like we’re adults, or something.” Allie laughs, because she’s literally sitting under a blanket on their couch in joggers and a hoodie and Harry’s in jeans and a Harvard tee shirt he’s had for literally longer than she’s known him. He puts his arm around her on the sofa and she likes the way he laughs when she asks if they can order McDonald’s. He kisses her hair as he opens Uber Eats on his phone. He’s never done that before. He clears his throat nervously and Allie moves closer to him, feels him relax next to her in response. 

She kisses him in June, when they’re sitting on the grass in Boston Common, iced coffees next to them and him giving her advice on how she should ask for a promotion. She just leans over, not even touching him, and presses her lips against his. He doesn’t kiss back - maybe he just doesn’t have a chance - before she’s pulling away, feeling like an idiot. She looks away from him when he says her name all softly. When she finally looks back at him, he’s smiling a little, this really genuine thing she’s sort of in love with - legitimately in love with - and he leans towards her. 

He asks, “Are we doing this?” and she doesn’t know what that means. He’s smiling, though. She thinks he wants her to say yes.

“Do you want to?”

Harry nods, then reaches over, the tips of his fingers sliding up her bare thigh gently. “I’ve wanted to for a while.”

Allie takes his face in her hands and kisses him again. Less quickly. More softly. Harry’s hand slips into her hair and she can feel him smiling against her mouth. 

It goes like this: 

Allie ends up sleeping in his bed most nights, because it’s more comfortable than her own. And he’s there. But she tells him it’s mostly because of the mattress. He says, “Yeah, naturally.” 

She gets a new job. He pushes her to negotiate harder for more money, because she’s worth it and she shouldn’t let them lowball her. She’s anxious for days until they give a counter offer that puts her right in the window she wanted to be in. They go out to dinner after she accepts, signs, and puts her notice in at her current job. Harry spends too much on dinner and then, at home in the dark in their kitchen when she’s pouring herself a glass of water, tells her he’s really proud of her. 

She says she loves him one morning when he’s between her thighs, and it makes him let out this sound she’s maybe never heard, and he goes still above her and kisses her a little too gently. He echoes the words and then proceeds to tease her until she’s saying she hates him.

Kelly comes to town with her girlfriend, a trip to the east coast to meet Kelly’s family with a stop off in Boston to meet her friends. Kelly and Allie go to the washroom before their dinner is served, and Kelly looks as smug as the girl has ever been when she says, “I told you.”

Allie says, “I know,” because she doesn’t feel like fighting it. 

When they get back to the table, Harry’s grinning when he asks, “Were you talking about me in the bathroom?”

Allie laughs, smiles at him sweetly. “We’ve been talking about you in bathrooms for years.”

Kelly laughs, and Becca’s watching with amusement on her face, and Harry winks at Allie when no one’s looking.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> co-stars

Cassandra literally breaks her leg three and a half weeks before opening night. The only person who knows all her lines the way she does is him, and he obviously can’t play both leads. 

But then Allie Pressman is stepping out from backstage, looking terrified, Will behind her, and saying, “I know most of it.” 

She’s literally pushed towards him, steps on his mark instead of hers until he points at the other little red piece of tape. “It’s that one.”

“Right.” She looks up into his eyes, and he honestly doesn’t know how this is gonna go, but she looks like she wants him to go easy on her. 

She says, “What the fuck am I doing?” under her breath. It makes him laugh. 

He reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, and they take it from the top of Act 1. 

-

She’s good. 

She’s okay. 

She knows all the lines. 

Before practice the third day after she’s volunteered to take on the role, he catches her and tells her to just relax. 

“I’m relaxed,” she tells him. It feels like a lie. “I’m just not an actor.”

Harry laughs too hard. “Well, you better learn.”

She says, “Teach me,” and it sounds sort of hot, and also this is his last play and he knows if she looks bad it’ll make him look bad, too. 

He tells her to come over after school. She looks wary, but nods and says she’ll bring her script so she can make notes. He sort of appreciates how seriously she’s taking it. 

-

She flops back on her bed after she messes up a line, and he smiles a little, thinking she’s just being dramatic and hard on herself. 

Then he sees her wipe a tear. Shit. 

She’s been coming to his house every other day for a week. They open in just over two weeks. She’s so close to getting it, he’s not really worried about it anymore. She still is. 

“You’re good,” he tells her, hoping it’s convincing. It must not be. She sniffs, wipes her eyes again. He goes over and sits next to her. “Allie, seriously. You know I’d tell you if you weren’t.”

“If I get up there and fuck up my lines, everyone will just…”

He furrows his brow. “What?”

She’s like, really crying. Fuck. “It’ll just be more proof I’m not as good as her,” she says, and she sounds really sure of it. He doesn’t know how to respond to it. “People already think I’m a poor man’s Cassandra.”

Harry doesn’t think that. 

“I don’t think that.” 

She looks over at him, then leans up on her elbows before sitting up fully. “You don’t have to say that.”

He shrugs. “I’m not just saying it.” He gives her a little grin. He just wants her to look less sad, okay? “I think you’re great.”

She’s just watching him a moment, then she says, “Thanks,” all soft, and Harry knows exactly what he wants to do, which is kiss her, which is wrong for a lot of reasons. 

“Again?”

She nods, gets up, and doesn’t make a single other mistake the rest of the day.

-

They haven’t actually been practicing the kissing scene, because their director thinks it’s weird to have teenagers kiss over and over again for an audience of their peers. It’ll be different when it’s during an actual performance. 

Harry’s familiar with this tactic. Allie’s not. 

“It’s just weird,” she says, and he laughs a little. They’re sitting at the edge of the stage, her hip against his. “What if it looks bad?” She grins, looks at him from the corner of her eye. “What if you’re a bad kisser?”

“Right,” he scoffs, and she laughs and looks down at her lap. “You’ve like, kissed people, right?”

“Oh my god, Harry,” she says, chuckling, shaking her head. “Yes, you idiot. I’ve kissed people. I’m not completely repulsive to everyone.”

He furrows his brow. “You’re not repulsive to me.”

It feels important to say. 

She doesn’t respond. 

-

They end up practicing the kiss in his bedroom. 

Stop. It’s not even like that. 

She insists on it. She’s freaking out about it. She tells him it’s for the play, that Kelly can’t have a problem with it because it’s for the play. 

Kelly absolutely can have a problem with it and he assumes she will. Would. If he told her. Which he doesn’t plan to. 

Allie’s lips are soft, and he doesn’t think they have to worry about it looking bad or unnatural or any of the other words she’s used in the last few days. 

He’s the one who suggests they try it again. 

Fuck. 

-

She looks really good in her costume. He can tell she knows it, too. This period dress that makes her look soft and ethereal. 

He doesn’t say anything. 

He regrets it. 

-

Opening night, he hands her flowers before they go on, in the dressing room when she’s putting powder put on her face. 

“Break a leg,” he says, and laughs when she gives him a shitty look. 

“You think that’s funny?” He shrugs. She takes a deep breath. “Tell me I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”

Harry puts his hands on her shoulders, looks at her in the mirror. Looks at them. Thinks they look good. 

“You’re gonna be amazing.”

It’s too soft. It’s too honest. He rubs his thumbs over her bare skin before pulling away. 

-

When the curtain comes down, she launches herself at him, hugs him tight and then looks up in his eyes. 

Kissing her has never felt like pretending. He hasn’t told anyone that. 

He wants to kiss her now. 

His girlfriend’s 15 feet away. 

They hold hands, he and Allie, for curtain call. Her cheeks are all flushed. 

Kelly’s got Allie’s other hand. 

Harry feels a little sick.

-

She comes to the afterparty at his place because he made her promise to, last week when they were running lines by the pool. 

Now, she’s drinking white wine and looking pretty and nervous and it’s just them out here again. 

“I’m gonna miss this,” she says. 

“Miss what?”

She presses her lips together. “This,” she repeats, which doesn’t help. “You, I think.” 

“We can still hang out,” he tells her, and he means it. 

Her smile is fake. He knows her fake smile because they’ve literally been acting together for weeks. 

She says, “Right,” and he wants to ask more, but then Kelly’s walking towards him, telling him about someone raiding the bar, or something. 

He gives Allie a last look before he goes inside. She looks between him and Kelly. 

Oh. 

-

He breaks up with Kelly when he realizes he’s spending too much time wondering why being with her doesn’t feel like being with Allie. 

He doesn’t tell Allie about the breakup. He doesn’t know what to say. She’ll find out anyway.

-

She asks him for help studying for history. He knows Cassandra took the class last year also. 

“Yeah, but you did better than her. I heard about it all term.”

He laughs, tells her to come over after school. 

-

Allie’s beneath him on his bedroom floor and she laughs when she points it out, but like, he’s not bothered about where they are. 

“We can move to the bed,” he suggests, lips against her neck.

“Bad idea.” He lets out a hum right below her ear. She lets out this little sound in response. “Very bad idea.”

Harry laughs, not wanting to push her. When he moves away, she looks a little sad about it.

“Okay?” he asks, and he means it. He’s checking. 

“You’re a good kisser.” He grins. He knows. He’s heard it before. “But honestly…”

“Honestly?” he asks when she doesn’t finish. 

She chews the edge of her lip. “Nothing.” She pecks him on the lips and reaches for her history notes again. “Nevermind.”

He wants to push her to finish her thought, but he doesn’t. 

-

“Maybe you never would’ve noticed me if Cassandra hadn’t gotten hurt.”

Harry scoffs, looks over at her like she’s crazy. They’re in his car. This feels like a date. 

“What makes you think I didn’t notice you before?”

He really likes this smile. The real one. The one she gives when she’s happy.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> partners in crime

He chews bubblegum when he drives. Not even just like, regular minty gum. For him, it’s strawberry Hubba Bubba or he says he’ll have a panic attack. Allie’s started keeping some in her backpack just in case he forgets or can’t find any. 

He’s a good driver or she wouldn’t work with him. She’d told their boss that, too. She didn’t want a repeat of the last time, when she was told her driver was ‘a little green’ and showed up in a fucking bright yellow Ford Focus. Harry has a Maserati and a BMW and an SUV for specific jobs, and he’s shown up other times in other cars and told her not to ask questions. She always asks questions. He only sometimes answers. Sometimes she can make him. 

But the bubblegum, in particular the bubble snapping, drives her fucking crazy. She also thinks it’s a little gross that he wads up the flavourless, chewed gum in the wrappers and drops it into the empty coffee cup in the cupholder. 

Maybe she’s just on edge. She pulls her hat down over her head after she’s finished braiding her hair, and then puts her black hoodie up over her head to cover her hair and obscure her face. Harry cuts the lights on the car and glances over at her. 

“You ready?”

“I’d tell you if I wasn’t,” she replies easily, leaning her head back against the headrest, her elbow on the door 

“This is a big deal, Allie. No fucking around.” 

He sounds mad already. That sort of pisses her off. As if he’s trying to imply that she usually fucks around. So she ignores it, because getting into it with him before they even pull up to this strip mall where she’s meant to enter an abandoned shop and pick up a briefcase full of cash is definitely not going to get them anywhere. 

But then he picks her hand up off her thigh, slips his fingers between hers. “Hey.” She glances over at him. They don’t do this when they’re working. That’s one of their rules. “Code word.”

She laughs softly, rolls her eyes, and squeezes his hand. “Avocado.”

He grins, one hand on the wheel, as he turns onto this shitty road in this shitty town in upstate New York. “Avocado.”

It’s stupid. They’d picked a new one after the last one felt wrong. The last one was a phrase, not a word. It was “I love you”. It was a thing she’d say if she was in trouble, that she’d work into a conversation and he’d hear through an ear piece and come to help. Usually he’d just bring the car up before they’d planned, or to a different spot. One time, he’d rushed in, punched a guy in the face, and grabbed Allie’s hand as he started running back to the car. 

They’re a little more careful about the kind of jobs they accept now. 

They’re careful to make sure their code word is not something they say to one another any other time. Like in the dark, alone, when they’re not working.

He lets her hand go well before they’re approaching the strip mall. Allie takes a steadying breath as he pulls into the lot. The place is a shithole. Looks condemned. She wishes her boss wouldn’t set up drop points like this. There’re always spiders and sometimes possums and shit lurking around. One time, she was scared to the point of screaming by a family of raccoons. Harry’d nearly had a heart attack when he heard it through the earpiece. 

She opens the door before the car’s even at a full stop. She doesn’t say anything to Harry before she gets out. She never does. One time she did, way back in the beginning, and he’d told her he had a bad feeling about it. It’d thrown her off and made her take twice as long because she kept looking over her shoulder. She won’t let him make her feel that way again. 

She finds the briefcase easily enough. It’s on a sink in the back room. She doesn’t open it - she never opens it, never looks to see what’s inside even though she usually, most of the time, knows what it is she’s picking up. She grabs it, heads back towards the door she came in through. 

Allie hears footsteps behind her as soon as she’s outside. Harry’s in the car 50 feet away, and she hears running behind her. Getting closer. She picks up her pace and is about to use the code word when the car moves in reverse quickly, then screeches to a halt right next to her and she pulls the door open. 

This time, she doesn’t even have her legs fully inside before Harry’s hitting the gas. The door slams closed from the movement just as she’s pulled her full self in. She’s in the seat weirdly, leaning way towards Harry, her legs bent at a strange angle. Harry looks over, gives her a once over like he needs to see she’s okay. Once he’s satisfied, he makes a sharp left out onto the road and goes the opposite way of how they arrived. Allie dares to look behind them. Whoever was chasing her is still there. She notices they have a flashlight and they’re trying to see the car. Fucking low skill security guard, probably. 

“We were told there was no patrol,” she says, pissed, and positions herself properly in the seat, pulling her seatbelt on. Harry’s driving too fast. If they get pulled over, they’re fucked. If that guard calls it in, they’re fucked. 

“I told you we should’ve staked it out ourselves.”

“Thank you for that. So helpful,” she snaps, shakes her head. She throws the briefcase into the back seat and Harry’s clenching his jaw. “Slow down.”

“Not yet,” he tells her, and she pushes her hood down, takes off her hat. She’s pissed at him. No, that’s not fair. She’s pissed at the situation and taking it out on him. “Not until we’re further away, Allie. You know how this fucking goes.”

She puts her shoulders back against the seat and takes a few deep breaths. He eventually eases off the gas and then sticks to just a few miles above the speed limit all the way back to Lake Placid. They stop once, just to switch out the license plates. Harry’d pointed out another black Maserati earlier today when they were in town. That’s helpful. The thing about fast, expensive cars is that not everybody has one. It’s always a relief when they’re not the only ones with the make and model.

She’s pulling off her clothes in their hotel room as Harry sets the briefcase into the extra, locked compartment of his luggage. When he’s done, he’s just looking at her. Her nerves are calmed, and now she just feels tired. Hungry. She wants a drink. 

Harry crooks his finger when she’s down to her black sports bra and black pants. She doesn’t want to give in, but he looks so fucking good, you know? 

He wraps his arms around her shoulder, lips against her ear. “It’s getting harder,” he says, and she doesn’t know what that means. She pulls away, looks at him curiously. “When shit goes sideways. I’m too invested.”

She wants to laugh. They knew this would happen. It’s why they resisted it for like, two years before finally giving in, that time in Denver. 

“Do you wanna stop?”

“Stop what?” he asks quickly, quietly, eyes a little frantic. 

She sets her hand on his jaw. “Working,” she says, reassuring. 

They’ve talked about it. They’ve talked about a lot. Including what happens if they get caught. What happens if someone turns them in, or their boss turns on them and comes after them. They’ve even talked about starting their own operation, though that was sort of a joke. 

“I don’t know,” he answers. Allie nods. It’s okay that he doesn’t know. She doesn’t either. “But I don’t wanna stop this.”

Allie smiles just a little, says, “Me neither,” and then he tastes like strawberry bubblegum when he kisses her.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> literally bumping into each other & miserable at someone else's wedding

He thinks maybe his aversion to shit like this stems from the amount of it he was required to do when he was a kid. And also maybe that he wears a suit every day for work, and attends enough dinners and society shit that he doesn’t require the occasion to dress up. Putting on a suit and tie feels no more special for a wedding than it does to go to the office, if he’s being honest.

And maybe Harry’s just pissed that his mom insisted he come to this stupid thing, even though she couldn’t. They each got their own invites, and like most of the shit that comes out of his stupid hometown, he’d ignored it, tossed it onto the pile of other mail he ignores but can’t throw away because he knows she’ll ask him about it. Her reason for bailing isn’t even good. She’s just at the summer house with Gary, which always sets Harry’s teeth on edge, even after like, 10 years. 

So no, he doesn’t want to be out here in 90 degree heat at a wedding for the daughter of one of the people who used to meet his mom at the club for lunch and...He’s not stupid. He’s pretty sure the only reason he was invited is the bride has a sister that their mom has been trying to get Harry involved with since he was easily 18. It’s absolutely a shit thing to think, but the bride’s the pretty one and she’s clearly off the market. 

Anyway, he’s by the bar because food and drink are clearly the best things about this and most weddings. There’re signature cocktails, because of course there are. One for the bride and one for the groom. Something sweet with gin for her and something bitter with whiskey for him. He ignores it all together and just asks for a scotch and soda. His mom told him he had to stay until at least after the dancing starts. He checks his watch, then turns around to head back to his seat. 

In doing so, he knocks right into someone. She lets out this little yelp and he reaches out with his free hand to steady her, and then notices her left arm is in a sling and he feels like a real asshole. 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she says, but she’s grimacing, then reaches up to adjust the sling over her collarbone. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

He knows she’s still got a good hand, but he still feels bad, so he asks, “Let me grab you a drink.”

She hesitates like she thinks he might just be hitting on her, which...Like, she’s fucking gorgeous. So yeah, he could. He might. If he hadn’t just knocked into her like a clumsy idiot and she wasn’t already injured. Her hair’s all pretty, curled and pinned over one shoulder, the one with the sling, and she’s wearing this floral dress with a high neckline that he thinks is hotter than it’s meant to be. 

Anyway, she pauses, and seems to look him up and down, too, which he doesn’t hate. 

“Vodka soda,” she says, and then when he turns back to the bar, she asks, “Bride or groom’s side?”

He lets out a hum. “Technically, bride’s. But really neither.”

She laughs, and he looks over at the sound. “Who’re you here with?”

“No one,” he answers too quickly. Her brow goes up a little. “My mom made me.” She laughs out loud again, and he almost feels like blushing. “She couldn’t come. I’m representing the family.”

“Ah.” The bartender sets her drink on the bar, and Harry grabs it, holds it out for her. She thanks him. “I”m Allie.” 

“Harry.” He wishes he could shake her hand, or something. He puts his hand on her back to get them away from the bar because there’s a bit of a line forming. She moves easily, leads him a little as she walks to the edge of the room, near a column, or whatever, with a huge arrangement of flowers on it. “What’d you think of the ceremony?”

She shrugs. “It was fine. Formal. Boring.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” he says with a smirk. She rolls her eyes. 

“The groom is my ex’s cousin,” she tells him, and he doesn’t know what to say to that. Sounds like a bit of a messed up dynamic. “We’re closer now than we were then, and he’s not close with my ex, but all night, my ex has been...It’s a whole thing.” 

Harry thinks this could be an in. “Wanna make him jealous?”

Allie looks at him from under her lashes. “He gets mean when he’s jealous.” Harry’s brow furrows. That sounds fucked up. “Think you can handle it?”

“No,” he says honestly, which makes her laugh again, then sip her drink. “What happened to your arm?”

“I dislocated my shoulder,” she says. “It’s not a big deal, it just hurts.”

“My tolerance for pain is really low,” he tells her, which is stupid and he doesn’t know why he says it. But she smiles like she likes it. “Seems like you could be having more fun, too.”

She raises her brow, takes a drink. “Are you about to make an offer?” she asks, and almost sounds like she’s begging him to do it. 

“It’d probably piss a bunch of people off if we just bailed.”

Allie, looking sexy and tempting, bites her bottom lip and then locks eyes with him. “Probably.” He’s just watching her as she looks away, over to, maybe, her table, or something. “But if I have a couple more drinks, I’m liable not to care.”

Harry raises his brow, thinks she’s maybe the most interesting person he’s met in ages. “Wanna meet back up after dinner and see where we’re at?”

She lets out what he can only really describe as a giggle, and says, “Absolutely.” 

She touches his arm on her way past to go back to her table. Harry just turns and watches her go, anticipation bubbling up in him as he sees plates starting to come out from the kitchen. 

She catches his eye from across the room a couple times throughout dinner. The third time, he raises his glass to her. She raises hers back, just subtly. A half hour later, she links her good arm through his, asks where they’re gonna run off to. He says his place has a great pool and a pretty backyard. 

“Are there twinkle lights? I’ll only come if there’re twinkle lights.” 

There are. She looks really pretty in the glow of them, her feet in the water as they sit at the side of the pool.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> library au 1

She’s not watching the door. God. That’d just be embarrassing. And she definitely didn’t rearrange her task list so she’d be at the desk because she thought maybe - maybe - the hot guy she and Sam always talk about might come in. Like he usually does on Fridays. With a coffee in his hand and looking like he’s walked straight out of Brooks Brothers. 

He’s not even her type. But maybe that’s why it’s so fun to look. 

After she returns from checking something in her office, she’s walking back to the desk when she sees him browsing the biographies section and rolls her eyes at herself for feeling a pang of disappointment at having missed seeing him walk in. She and Sam talk about how weird it is that this guy always drops his books off at the desk, in person, instead of the little slot at the entrance like everyone else. But he also always does self checkout, which is a thing that’s new this year and she sort of...She just doesn’t get it. But it doesn’t matter. 

She didn’t become a librarian to obsess weirdly about hot guys at her work. She became a librarian because the library was her favourite place as a kid, and she thinks the value of a space where you don’t have to pay for access is…

Look, she’s really passionate about libraries. She wrote a whole thesis on it for her masters. 

She pushes her hair off her face and walks past him, notices when he looks her way, but doesn’t acknowledge it. Because she’s not trying to flirt. No, she and Sam talk about this guy all the time because it’s fun and stupid, but she’s simply not going to act on it. 

He checks out three books as he’s leaving. She doesn’t realize she’s staring until he glances over at her, grinning, and juts his chin like he really, really wants her to know he’s noticed. 

Well, fuck. 

-

“Hey.” 

She startles, bumps her knee on the desk, sloshes her tea in her cup, and then feels her cheeks heat up when she looks over and it’s The Guy, leaning his elbow on the counter and absolutely smirking at her. 

“Hi,” she gets out, and yeah, he’s going to have to stop it with that look. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a book.”

She can’t help herself. “Ah, sorry. D’you try the auto shop across the street?”

He tuts out a laugh, then pushes his hair back off his forehead, and like, this is a real human. This person actually just looks this way. Like, that’s a thing that is true. Allie blinks a few times, as if maybe he won’t look so fucking good if she does that.

“Blue Ocean Strategy,” he says, and she nods because she’s seen the cover and knows they have it. Or should, unless someone’s got it checked out. 

She wiggles her mouse to wake up the computer, types the title into the system and purses her lips. “Out until Wednesday. Probably.”

“Probably?”

Yeah, why does he keep looking at her that way? And why does he now have both elbows on the counter, his shoulders squared to hers?

“Not everyone’s as punctual returning things as you are,” she tells him, and he looks almost cute when he smiles, which is just...look, cute is not a thing she would’ve thought someone with his bone structure could pull off, but here they are. “I’ll put a hold on it for you, if you want?”

She’s already opening the window to hold the title when he says, “Yeah? You’ll call me?”

Oh. Oh. When she looks up, he’s wearing this look that...Yeah, he knows what he’s doing, and now she does, too. He’s flirting. 

“Someone will call you,” she says lightly, and she should absolutely keep this professional and just ask him for his fucking library card and do her job, but...well. She doesn’t do that. She does not do that at all. “If you want me, specifically, to call you, you could just ask.”

Okay, a genuine smile from him is a thing she now realizes she’s never actually seen. 

So that’s how she ends up giving him her number, her name, and he says, “I’m Harry.” And then he’s slipping his phone back into his pocket, and the grin is back, and he’s saying, “I’ll text you,” and she just nods. How the hell has this happened? He starts to walk away, then she hears him laugh, turn and come back. “No, I actually need the book, though.”

Allie laughs too loudly, given that this is a fucking library, but then he slides his library card across the desk and she tries very hard to focus on her task and not the way he’s looking at her. 

(Later, she learns he kind of likes looking at her. That he does it a lot. At least that’s what he tells her via text when she’s waiting for her dinner to arrive and he’s started messaging her and she absolutely has no chill and messages him back right away.)


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> library au 2

He volunteers at the law school library because someone - multiple people - told him it’d look good if he did, and he likes looking good. Standing out, or whatever. And he knows it’s going to be competitive after he passes the bar, and whatever he can do to give himself an edge, he’s gonna do. 

It is literally the most boring fucking experience he’s ever had in his life. 

They don’t actually let him do anything. As if being a law student makes him incapable of using a basic software or something. No, he spends two weeks in ‘training’ on the Dewey Decimal System as if it’s its own language, or whatever, and then basically pushes around a little cart every shift, putting books back on shelves, picking up things people leave to be put away, and, to his dismay, literally cleaning up peoples’ garbage.

The first time he sees Allie in the library, she’s wearing these little rose gold reading glasses and her hands are in her hair like she’s really struggling to grasp whatever it is she’s reading about. Which…

Look, he doesn’t know her. Not really. They were in the same lecture a couple times, and there’s that one time they were sort of flirting at that shitty party in Somerville, and she maybe ditched him when she said she was going to get another drink. 

So yeah, he knows her name, and he knows she’s smart and cute and works her ass off and that he maybe, maybe had a crush on her after that party because he sort of likes a bit of a chase and because she’d looked super fucking hot that night. 

Anyway, they’re closing in a half hour, which means it’s 11:30 and he has the joyful task of telling stressed out students they need to wrap it up and get out of here. 

“Hey,” he says, and she jerks her head up fast, surprised to see him standing in front of her with a stupid metal nametag on. “Almost midnight.”

She taps her phone as if she needs to confirm it for herself, then brings her hands to her face to press against her eyes, and says, “Okay. Thanks.”

“Are you okay?” She nods, but she looks like she’s on the verge of tears. He glances around, then sits down across from her, leans towards her a little. “Allie.”

She smiles just a little, before it slips away. “Surprised you remember my name.”

He grins at her a little, lopsided because he doesn’t want her to think he can’t play it cool. Because he wants to flirt, not have her bust his chops. (Which, he thinks, is how she flirts, but that’s not his style. He really sort of wants to make her flirt the way he does. There’s something hot about it. About the idea of her playing his game.) 

“I remember,” he tells her, and then her eyes land on his and he thinks she, too, is remembering that party, where she almost let him kiss her and then bailed. “What’re you working through?”

She sighs, slides the book his way. “Property law. I can’t stand it and the prof is boring.”

He breathes a laugh. “Had it last semester.” She looks almost hopeful. “It’s not that hard.”

Okay, wrong thing to say. She narrows her eyes and jerks the book back towards herself. 

“Must be nice.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says gently, because he didn’t, and because… He doesn’t know what it is about her that he likes so much, but it’s something. And it’s something he wants to explore more. And it’s not just that she’s hot, though...though there’s definitely that. “I can help you.”

She tilts her head, gives him a shitty look like he’s not clever. (Which isn’t true. He’s, in fact, very clever.) “I’m sure. Something about us pulling an all nighter together?”

He laughs. Hard. That’s funny. She’s funny. And like, that’s absolutely not what he was going to say, but he doesn’t hate that her mind went there. 

“There’s a 24 hour coffee shop nearby. We can go there if you want.”

Her brow furrows, but she recovers quickly, then she rubs her lips together a little, which is hotter than he’d like it to be, honestly. 

“Why would you help me?” she asks. 

He stands up, leans a hand on the table and smirks at her. “I’m trying to get in your pants, obviously.” He makes it sound like a joke, rolls his eyes and everything when she smiles at him and lets out this little laugh. His coworker rounds the corner, gives him a look like he’s slacking or something. Which he is, but who cares? “You’re gonna get me in trouble.”

Her brow goes up and she rests her chin on her hand, which… “I think you like trouble.”

Yeah, he’s got absolutely no possible response to that that isn’t filthy, so he just says, “Meet me at the front in like, 20 minutes.” 

She hesitates a moment, then nods gently, and he’s smiling as he walks away, which is stupid. Studying with her is sort of close to the last thing he’s interested in. 

(When she kisses him later, in his car, when they get in after spending two hours at the coffee shop and she told him she feels like she’s starting to understand ‘this shit’, she just… She says, “I really didn’t want to like you, but…” and then she’s kissing him again before she finishes, and he’s thinking he can sort of guess the rest.)


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The truth is I have my best nights without you.”

She pours herself another drink and ignores his call. She almost wants to laugh at the timing of it, because it’s just so very typical; it’s after midnight, and she hasn’t heard from him in about six weeks, since she texted asking if he wanted to grab coffee, actually see one another in the daylight, and he’d made up some stupid excuse about having a crazy week. He’d asked her for a raincheck and she hadn’t replied then, either. 

She’s tired of doing this shit only when it’s convenient for him. Actually, it makes her feel kind of awful. 

They shouldn’t be doing it at all. God, they’d ‘ended it’ two years ago at this point. Even that, she has to laugh at, because the only thing they really ended was seeing each other regularly and having any kind of commitment to one another. They didn’t end sleeping together when the mood strikes. And she isn’t confident they’ll ever be able to end this stupid pull they have to one another. The way everything feels somehow easy and really fucking huge at the same time. 

“Do you need to take that?” 

Allie shakes her head, leans toward her date. “No,” she says, throws on a smile and tries not to think about Harry.

… … …

She’s out with Gavin and his friends at this dive bar in Brooklyn because his brother is in a band and they’re here to watch his set. 

Seeing Harry fucking Bingham here, of all places, makes her feel like she’s hallucinating. She’s drinking shitty, cheap bar rail drinks and he has an honest to God bottle of Bud dangling from his fingertips when he sees her, grins at her from across the bar. 

She decides in that moment that she needs to hold Gavin’s hand. Watches Harry’s face turn a little harder, a little less happy. Watches him sip his beer but keep his eyes on her.

When he’s finished his drink, he approaches. Which is just so bold and so like him. But he doesn’t even stop and say hi. He just puts his hand on her back when he passes between her and the person behind her. 

She looks over her shoulder and watches him leave. She’ll give it to him; he knows her. Knows how much this bothers her. Knows how much worse it is that he didn’t even say _anything_ , that he touched her but didn’t say a word. 

Fucking typical.

… … …

He sends her a bottle of insanely expensive champagne when she graduates. She doesn’t want to like it. She can’t stand that he remembered that stupid conversation they had that night in the dark in his room, when they’d celebrated her getting into grad school. She’d asked if she was crazy to sign up for years’ more worth of school and he’d said no, but they’d have to do something more than just ordering in and having sex to celebrate.

It was one of the only times he was the one to allude to anything long term. Allie’d run with it. Told him she wanted flowers and champagne and then maybe they could take a trip, or something, before she had to be a real adult. 

She spends 10 days in Thailand and posts to Instagram multiple times a day because she knows he still follows her.

… … …

In the dead of summer, he shows up at her place, drunk and alone, buzzing the door obnoxiously and then looking far too happy to see her.

“What do you want?” she asks him at the door, her body between it and the frame because she wants to make it clear he can’t come in.

“I missed you,” he says, sounding _good_ and sincere and also...God, she shouldn’t believe him. She’s smarter than that, isn’t she?

She shakes her head at him. “I have a boyfriend.”

He looks at her like he’s shocked and also doesn’t like this. “That guy? From like, a year ago?” She just nods. She doesn’t think he should get to know Gavin’s name. “Why him?”

Honestly, it sounds a lot like ‘why not me?’

“Harry, don’t do this.”

“Why not?”

Yeah, this is messed up and she isn’t super interested in it. 

“Don’t make it sound like you didn’t get a chance. Or like, 30 chances.”

He grins, this infuriating thing that’s only infuriating because it makes her totally weak in the knees for him. Every fucking time. 

He leans his hand on the door frame. “31st time’s a charm.”

She starts closing the door. 

-

She gets engaged over the holidays. It’s this quiet moment between her and Gavin in the apartment he bought and moved into early in December. Barely furnished and running a little too hot because the thermostat is old. They’d been in bed and he’d gotten up, asked her to wait there, and then returned with a ring. 

Allie isn’t surprised at all when it takes only two days for Harry’s name to come up on her phone screen. And she answers, because she’s a fool. 

“Remember that time in the Catskills?”

Allie closes her eyes. “No.”

Yes.

“C’mon. Yes, you do. We went on that hike.”

She realizes too late she’s playing right into his hands when she says, “It was a walk.”

“So you do remember.” He’s smirking and she can hear it and she should hang up. He doesn’t get to do this shit anymore. But he pauses, and she knows why he’s calling. “Are you really getting married?”

“That’s the plan,” she says, though it comes out a little softer than she’d hoped it would. He’s just breathing in her ear. 

“Okay but. What if you didn’t?”

Allie sighs. The idea that he thinks there’s anything he could do or offer her to make her not be with someone else is actually really insulting and pisses her off. 

“Goodbye, Harry.”

“No, wait.” He sounds a little frantic, genuinely upset, and Allie holds her breath, but doesn’t hang up. Because she’s a fool where he’s concerned. Obviously. “I just. I’ve always loved you. You know that, right?”

She feels her throat get tight, anchors her hand against the back of her sofa because she feels like she might faint, or something. God, it’s been years, literally, since she heard him say that. She can still remember the first time. And she’d loved him, too. Big and reckless and scary. Too much. Too much to be able to make it work. 

“Yes,” she answers quietly, hating herself for feeling like she’s going to cry over him. Again. 

“It could’ve been me, couldn’t it?” He's asking like he really needs to know. Like it’s important. 

She answers truthfully, which is to say, “I don’t know.”

He lets out this huff of a laugh like he doesn’t believe that. “I think it could’ve. I almost asked you once, but we were like, 22 and it felt insane.”

“What?” She laughs because if she doesn’t, she might forget how to breathe. “What are you talking about?”

He just hums. But no, she needs to know what the fuck he’s talking about. 

“When we were in London. Looking at the Crown Jewels. Your eyes were all sparkly looking at all those diamonds.”

She…God, that was an amazing trip. She’s trying to think of that instead of what it means if he actually...If he was really this serious about them. Because honestly she’s never actually been sure. “What does that have to do with proposing?”

He pauses. “I just wanted to give you everything you wanted for as long as I could. Proposing felt like a pretty sound way to do that.”

Yeah, she’s definitely crying now. She looks down at her hand, at the ring there. It’s beautiful; and she likes it so much, but she also now can’t help thinking about what Harry would’ve gotten her. She hates herself for that, too. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that Harry’s doing this to her. It’s not fair that Gavin has no idea. 

“Why didn’t you?” she asks, and yeah, this is really not fair. 

“I told you. We were too young.”

“So?” she answers and like, god. She might as well just tell him she…

“Are you saying you would’ve said yes?” He sounds sort of choked up. Like he’s surprised. Like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. 

“Probably not,” she answers. It feels honest, even if she isn’t actually sure. “I probably would’ve told you to stop being stupid.” He laughs at that. It makes her smile, too. “But secretly I would’ve wanted to say yes.”

There’s a silence, like he doesn’t know what to do with this information, either. She should end this call. She should tell him sincerely to have a nice life and then delete his number. 

But then he says, “Allie... Allie, will you marry me?” and it startles a laugh out of her because it’s so fucking absurd. They haven’t been together and she’s literally engaged to someone else. 

Hearing this question from two different people twice in a week makes her feel like maybe this situation is a little more fucked up than she’d been wanting to believe. 

“I have to go.”

“That’s not a no.”

She laughs, which feels so odd again. “I’m not doing this with you right now.”

She ends the call after saying she’ll talk to him later, which probably gives something away.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna love you but I don’t know how

This support group is bullshit, but literally the only way her parents would let her leave the state for school is if she promised she’d continue going. They make her send fucking pictures of the sign outside the church with the date on it so she can’t skip. Except that one time she was sick and that other time she had a midterm the next day. 

The coffee is shitty and the fluorescent lights of the church basement almost make her ears ring. She wonders how much longer they’ll think Cassandra’s death is making her depressed. She wonders if she’ll have all four years of her life in undergrad marked by this sad fucking weekly sharing circle she’s actually being forced to go to. 

There’s one bright spot. 

He - Harry; she knows his name - walks in, sits down in the chair directly across from hers. Like usual. Because she thinks he hates this as much as she does, and sometimes they share looks when other people are sharing. Which is kind of the worst, but it’s subtle, so maybe it’s fine. 

(It’s definitely not fine. She’s an asshole sometimes. She knows this about herself.)

“Allie? Do you want to share today?” the group leader, Sharon, asks. 

“I’m good,” Allie says too quickly. Harry’s lips quirk, brow going up like he’s actually challenging her to say something. She sighs, and everyone waits, looking at her with all this sympathy. She hates it. “I mean, my sister’s death still feels like shit, so. That’s where I’m at.”

They move on after that. Or rather, she doesn’t say anything else. 

Harry bumps his shoulder against hers as they ascend the stairs to leave. “Swearing in a church? Kind of a boss move.” 

“Shut up.”

He smiles at her, then presses the button on the key fob in his hand once they’re outside. The lights on a shiny car flash and Allie rolls her eyes and walks the other way without saying goodbye. 

-

“My dad was...kind of the worst,” he shares. Allie plays with the lid of her coffee cup so she doesn’t have to look at him. “I spent all my time when he was alive trying not to be like him, and now, like...I dunno. I’m exactly like him but I don’t know how to stop.”

She glances up, then. “Are you saying you’re the worst?” she asks, because she apparently has no fucking tact today. He tilts his head, eyes narrowed. Sharon says something to her about not interrupting others when they’re sharing. Allie wants to roll her eyes, but doesn’t. 

“I think I’m doing all the same stuff he did to try and feel something.” 

God. Allie just...She nods at him after a moment, because she thinks he sort of wanted her to acknowledge it. He leaves without talking to her. They’ve been doing this dumb sort of flirty bantering at the end of every meeting. She properly misses it, and he’s driving away by the time she’s outside. 

-

Letting Harry-whose-last-name-she-doesn’t-even-know put his hand up under her skirt outside a church in the middle of Boston on a Wednesday evening is right up there with one of the poorest choices she’s ever made. But it feels fucking incredible, so she can’t say she’s entirely interested in stopping it, either. Her shoulders are pressing back against the brick and he says something about her being wet. She’s been wet since he literally licked his lips and blinked at her all heavy inside when Sharon was saying something about next week’s session being a half hour later than usual. 

“Stop,” she breathes, and then laughs at herself and a little at him, too. He stops, presses his hands on either side of her head, then, as she fixes her skirt. “What the fuck are we doing?”

He grins, this wicked thing she thinks is bad news. “Comforting each other?”

Allie takes a breath, tugs him closer by the shirt. “My therapist warned me that filling my life with anonymous sex was a bad way of coping.”

Harry laughs. “I’m not anonymous. Fuck, you know more about me than almost anyone else, outside this group.”

She scoffs. “And yet you’re not pressing Sharon against a wall.”

He pulls a truly hilarious face, then his thigh’s between hers. Fuck. “Sharon doesn’t look the way you do.”

She hates herself a little for letting out a sound at that. It’s like, barely a compliment. But then she kisses him hard, says, “Drive me home,” and knows he’ll know what she’s actually saying. Which is, to say, that he’s invited in to finish what they’ve started. 

-

He doesn’t show for two weeks and Allie feels stupid, then angry, and then, the third week, she gets up and moves after he’s sat down so he can’t look at her. 

He catches up with her on the sidewalk after, his hand curving around her elbow. 

“I panicked,” he says, instead of like, anything else. “Being with you felt...really different. And I…”

Allie crosses her arms. “So I’m a good lay and you’re not used to that.”

“No,” he says, brow all furrowed, not even laughing at her joke. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I got all in my head about like, picking up a girl at my grief group, and how messed up that is. But also I’m into you, and all I wanted was to see you again.”

Allie doesn’t want to care. Honestly, it’s messed up that he ditched for two weeks and now wants to act like he’s just got all these feelings. But she believes him. She believes him because it sort of feels that way for her, too. Because what he said was true - it’s not like she’s talking to anyone else outside that room about the things she shares here. There’s something kind of nice about him knowing how fucked up she is and wanting her anyway.

“I asked Sharon for your number but she almost kicked me out for it,” he says, grinning, and Allie lets out a laugh without really wanting to. “I’m a fucking mess, but I like you.”

“You are a mess.” He smiles instead of being pissed, even though she’s definitely being serious. “But I’m a mess, too.”

“I know.” She narrows her eyes. He plays with his keys. Almost like he’s offering to take her somewhere again. Ugh. 

“Let’s get something to eat?” she suggests, because it feels like a better idea than just sleeping together again. Though she wants that, too, so maybe after…

Harry’s got a really good smile. She wants to see more of it. She does know that much.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t find familiar without you

The trip is a once in a lifetime kind of thing that she committed to before she committed to him. And when she puts it like that, it makes her feel fucking stupid for feeling, as she’s packing, like she kind of doesn’t want to go. But it’s her and Cassandra and a two week road trip to get Cassandra to Seattle for her new job, and then Allie driving back on her own. It’s going to be amazing. 

But Harry’d said he loves her two days ago, and Cassandra is going to be here in two hours, and he’s currently fully naked in Allie’s bed with his hand moving down her stomach and she’s thinking leaving seems really, really stupid. 

He kisses her on the sidewalk after loading her things into the trunk of the car for her. Cassandra gets into the driver’s seat to give them some privacy. 

“See you in a couple weeks,” he says, pushing her hair back off her face. 

“You just assume I’m coming back?”

It’s a stupid joke. He lets her have it. He hugs her, his arms around her shoulders, and says, “Love you,” into her ear like…

God, it’s still so new and she’s still so surprised every time he says it first. 

He watches them drive away. Allie blares a song he hates and hangs her arm out the window, watches him laughing in the rear view. 

-

Sleeping alone is new and weird. It’s so stupid how you get used to someone and something like that so quickly. 

She texts him from bed the first night, then gets into bed with Cassandra and puts her phone face down on the nightstand so she can’t see whatever snarky response he sends. 

In the morning, she laughs at his dumb comment about finally getting a night without the covers being pulled off him. Then he says he missed her, too. Which is sort of funny, because that’s not what she’d said. Harry’s pretty good at reading between the lines. 

-

She and Cassandra eat Tennessee barbecue and drink local craft beer and then get high on the porch of this little cottage they’ve rented outside Memphis. Cassandra takes her picture when she’s holding the joint between her lips and pulling her hair up because it’s fucking hot out. She likes the picture, sends it to Harry after Cass airdrops it to her. 

“Harry’s better at rolling than you are,” she comments off-handed as she passes back to her sister. 

Cassandra laughs. “My apologies. I’ll try better next time.”

When Harry replies to her photo, he tells her she looks hot, then sends back a screenshot of the joint, all zoomed in and blurry, with ‘wtf is that honestly tell me you didn’t roll’. She laughs and tyles out a reply, her mind a little fuzzy and the bugs biting her ankles.

-

They go to Texas because Cassandra wants to, and she won’t admit it’s because she’s been obsessed with Friday Night Lights for literally most of her life, but Allie knows. They find this little country market and buy a bunch of preserves and shit, and Allie ends up with the admittedly cute guy who’s working there dropping a white cowboy hat on her head and asking her if she’s from around here. Cassandra’s laughing and telling Allie the guy looks like Harry, if Harry grew up on a farm. The thought of it is so fucking hilarious to her she literally needs to step outside to catch her breath. 

She FaceTimes him, tells him, “I wish you were here. It’s wild. I think Cass wants to move to Texas, honestly.”

“Yeah? Texas forever, and all that shit?”

Her jaw drops at his Friday Night Lights reference, but he just rolls his eyes and says it’s a good show and he’s got taste, okay?

He tells her about his day, tells her he couldn’t sleep last night because he was stressed about the project he’s on at work. Tells her sincerely that he misses having her around. Cassandra comes up behind Allie, rests her chin on her shoulder and says something about how she never expected him to be so sappy. He tells her to fuck off. Allie rolls her eyes about the both of them. 

-

Allie likes San Diego. The weather is perfect and there are no bugs. Her hair appreciates the lack of humidity, and also, the food is good. She and Cassandra spend hours in Balboa Park. She gets a sunburn on her nose and it just reminds her of the weekend they spent at his beach house. 

“I feel like I’m losing it,” she tells her sister, and Cassandra just looks at her, confused. “Like, it’s fucked up to miss him this much. I want to be around him all the time.” 

Cassandra smiles gently, sips her bubble tea and tips her face back, her sunhat flopping a little. She looks really pretty. Allie should take more pictures. 

“You’re in love with him. It’s normal to want to be around him all the time.”

“It’s too new for it to be this serious.”

Cassandra laughs, tilts her head and pulls her sunglasses down to fix Allie with a stare. “The second you told me you’d gotten a drink with him, I knew it’d be all or nothing with you two.”

Allie presses her lips together. She very much likes that it’s all and not nothing. Maybe she should just be happy with that. Not talk herself out of it for any arbitrary reason. 

-

Leaving Cassandra in this apartment in Seattle is weird and emotional and makes her fucking sad. She cries the entire way out of the city and only pulls herself together on the highway when she’s blasting this amazing playlist they found on like, day two of the trip. 

Montana is her favourite state so far. She takes her time getting through it, stops at attractions and photos and takes two scenic routes instead of the freeway. After that, though, it’s just a lot of the middle part that she finds she’s got to make a conscious effort not to speed through. 

He’s waiting inside her apartment when she gets there, which is surprising because they hadn’t talked about it, but not surprising at all, because it’s just so like him to do this. She’d given him a key so he could water her plants while she was away. She didn’t think he’d be making carbonara, listening to Harry Styles, and smiling over at her when she walked through the door. 

“I missed you,” she says between kisses, makes him laugh, and he just nods. His hands are on her waist and he’s staring like he forgot what she looked like, or something. They’re being really gross about having spent a little time apart. 

“You’re all tanned.”

She smiles at him, fingers threading through his hair at the back of his head, and then says the thing she’s been thinking since West Virginia, at least. 

“Let’s make sure we travel together as much as possible.”

Harry gives her this gentle smile, nods a couple times, says, “Deal,” and then starts asking her where she wants to go, as he finishes making dinner.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Baby I know places we won't be found and they'll be Chasing their tails tryin' to track us down 'Cause I, I know places we can hide, I know places”

“I mean, I know a place, if you’re serious.”

Allie rolls her eyes, but Harry thinks she’s just...Look, she thinks he’s just trying to get into her pants. Which he is. Yes, that’s true. But he also likes her. Like, hanging out with this girl from his elective isn’t just about wanting to sleep with her. He knows she doesn't know how he’d be acting if that was the case, but still.

She’s just said she wants to get out of the city for a while, that she feels like the walls are closing in. He isn’t just going to ignore that, or the way she looks like she’s maybe about to start crying. Or the way her hand is in her hair like he knows she does when she’s frustrated. He’s really only known her for like, a month, and they’ve been hanging out together almost exclusively to study, but...He likes looking at her. He pays attention. 

“Let me guess,” she says, a little crooked grin on her lips. Harry sits down next to her on her sofa. “A yacht off San Tropez? Take the helicopter to the Hamptons?”

He laughs, but like...There is definitely a house in Europe and…

“No. I mean. We could drive. How do you feel about Nantucket?”

“Shut up,” she laughs, like she doesn’t believe he actually has the ability to take her there. She busts his chops about being rich, but he doesn’t think she really knows just how rich he is. And he’s not trying to be weird about it. It’s just that if she wants an escape, he can help with that. Pretty easily, actually. “Are you serious?”

He shrugs. “Wanna run away with me?”

Okay, so that’s definitely the kind of thing he’d say to someone he was trying to sleep with. He knows she doesn’t have any classes til Tuesday. That gives them a good few days by the water in the early spring. It’ll be nothing like being there in the summer, but that’s okay, maybe. 

“What would I tell Becca?” she asks, looking at him from under her lashes. He smiles, because he knows they’re definitely going if she’s asking this question.

“Who cares?” Like, her roommate seems like not a big deal at all. In fact, he overheard Becca in the background the other day when he called and Allie answered. Becca’d asked a ridiculously worded question wondering whether Harry and Allie are sleeping together yet. “Becca’s not your keeper.” Her face goes a little hard. But he thinks she likes that he doesn’t back down from her sometimes. “Or your babysitter. Text her you’re taking off for the weekend and you’ll be back Monday.”

“I hardly know you,” she says, and Harry scoffs because that feels like bullshit. Then she grins like she’s just fucking with him. “Come back and pick me up in a couple hours. Go pack.”

Harry kisses her cheek before he leaves, smiling, and he’s never had his lips on her at all, and it’s probably messed up that he did it just now, when they’re about to be alone for a weekend. But she’s smiling, too, and it’s fine, right? It’s fine. 

-

Allie’s standing at the bottom of the steps with one of his shirts on over her shoulders, her bikini and her shorts. It’s too cold for this, but she’s stubborn. And he can’t say he hates that she took this from him immediately after they arrived. Told him to take his blue button down off because it’d look better on her. 

Yeah, she knows exactly what she’s doing. And he knows exactly why he’s letting her. 

“This place must be amazing in the summer,” she comments when he joins her, passes her a mixed drink he just made her, and Harry looks down, moves his toes against the sand. He nods, but he also just…

“It’s my favourite place. My mom wanted to sell it after my dad died, but I...I kind of had a tantrum.” Allie laughs softly, but not at him, which is nice of her. “I love it here.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” she tells him sincerely, then slips her arm between his arm and his body, leans her head against his shoulder. The smell of the saltwater and her shampoo and whatever perfume it is she wears is sort of a lot to handle. “I feel better already.”

“Good,” he says, sips his drink, the wind blowing the shirt she’s wearing away from her body. She definitely catches him looking, but he doesn’t care.

-

She spreads her books out on the floor in the living room, on this white rug he remembers his mom paying a shit ton of money for and his dad laughing at how plain it is. 

She’s still wearing his shirt. She joked she might keep it. He was serious when he said she makes it look better than he ever could.

She pulls her hair up onto her head and there’s this one curl falling down the nape of her neck, and Harry definitely stares. He’s never really thought of a girl as truly beautiful before, but Allie definitely is. Like, she’s hot, obviously, but she looks like a fucking painting half the time, and he just blinks, wondering if he’s seeing things. But she looks up at him and the expression on her face is telling him she’s noticed his staring and wants to know what that’s about.

“You look like...very Botticellian.” Allie lets out a laugh, and he smiles, but he was also being serious. 

“Must be the sleep deprivation, modern clothing, and hot pink scrunchie.”

Harry rolls his eyes, slides off the sofa and onto the floor with her, reaches over to play with one of these little curls framing her face. 

“You’re like Venus.”

Allie turns into his touch a little, which he likes. A lot. 

She bats her lashes, glances at his mouth just briefly. “Goddess of desire, and all that?”

“Mm.”

She takes this sharp little breath, her eyes shining with something he’s never seen before. 

Then she puts her fingers against his cheek, and he thinks maybe it’s finally happening, but she just pushes his face gently, which makes him laugh even though he definitely wishes she hadn’t done that. 

“I have to study,” she reminds him, and he leans back on his hand, takes her book with the other, and tells her he’ll quiz her.

-

She crawls into his bed in the morning, which is...He really likes it. A lot. Too much. She has on these little shorts and a top with lace straps that he just…

“I’m cold,” she says, fitting herself all up against him. 

Harry smiles, knows she just wants to be near him. Like, he put two extra quilts at the foot of her bed last night when they were saying goodnight. He’s got his window open because he loves the smell of the ocean. Allie’s fingers press against his ribs and he closes his eyes again.

-

She kisses him on the beach when they go for a walk with cups of coffee in their hands and he’s just carrying his empty mug at this point. 

Allie stops him from walking, her palms against his chest, presses her lips to his. Then her forehead against his. 

And says, “I’ve been fighting it.”

“Why?” he laughs, and pushes her hair off her face only just to have the wind blow it again. 

“You’re not my type,” she tells him, and it makes him smile. That’s a stupid reason. 

“I’m better?” he asks, and she laughs hard, tips her head back, the sun hitting her face just so. He needs to stop looking at her so much. 

-

“Maybe I’m studying too much and that’s why I’m stressing. Like, I’m obsessing and not retaining anything.”

It’s late afternoon, and the sun’s coming in through the open windows, and Allie’s looking at her phone but talking to him. She’s swiping away notifications. She told him earlier that she didn’t tell anyone but Becca she was going away. That her parents would freak if they knew she was going away with some guy. It stung a little - he feels like he’s more to her than just some guy. 

“Wanna go back to the beach?” he asks, and Allie tosses her phone up onto the sofa and pulls the book from his hands, a dark look in her eye. He just raises his brow. 

“I have another idea.”

He smiles too widely, but asks, “Am I gonna like it?” even as she’s slinging one leg over him and resting her hands on his chest, pushing a little so he’ll lie flat on the floor. 

“I think so,” she says quietly, then leans down and teases her lips against his as he moves his hands up her thighs.

-

She’s standing on the balcony off his bedroom, his shirt wrapped around her again, leaning on the railing with a glass of water in her hand and her hair all down her back. Harry lies in bed and watches her, tries not to think about how it’s never been like this with any other girl. 

When he joins her, he just presses his chest to her back, sets his arms on the railing on either side of her, and falls a little in love with the way she leans her head back against him, eyes closed, and takes a deep breath. 

“I think I could stay here forever,” she says, and Harry lets out a hum. He’s had that thought enough times in his life; it’s familiar. “I can tell why it’s your favourite.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he tells her, and she laughs a little, her hand settling onto his wrist on the railing. He really kind of loves the way she touches him. 

“Will you bring me back?”

Harry nods, kisses her cheek because it’s right there next to his lips, and listens to the waves, and doesn’t even try to stop himself from thinking this already feels like a really good thing, with her.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Well, we both had nights wakin' up in strangers' beds But I don't wanna, don't wanna, I don't wanna give up yet”

Allie’s known they’re not soulmates from 15 minutes into their first date. Because that’s how it works. And she’s known that’s how it works since she was little, since her parents explained this all to her. Everyone had said she was too young, but her parents...They like open communication. And it’s important, they said, for their daughters to understand what’s going to happen to them. That dating is like this. That they can do what they want with whoever they want, but that when they meet their soulmates, that’s it for them. Her parents met when they were 20. A date at a museum in the city when they were both in school. Held hands in the planetarium and learned about the stars. 

Allie’s 26 and tired. 

Harry Bingham is the next date that’s arranged for her, and she laughs too hard for too long. She hasn’t seen him in something like 9 years, since high school ended for him. Last she’d heard, he went to Stanford. If he’s back on the east coast, that’s news to her. 

He’s better looking than she remembered. Which is a little wild, to be honest, because how she remembered him was pretty fucking good. 

“Allie Pressman,” he says, standing from the bench in the park where they’d been told to meet. “You grew up good.”

Allie presses her lips together, lets him kiss her cheek, then sits down next to him. “You too.”

They’re barely through catching up on how he ended up in Boston after school and what she does for work, when the notification comes. Harry smiles weakly, shows her his phone’s screen. Allie nods, shows hers, too. 

“Shame,” he says, using his fingers to play with the sleeve of her dress at her shoulder. He grins a little and Allie feels 17 again. Remembers that party at his house when he’d flirted with her for the first time and she felt so flattered. “We could’ve been good together.”

She laughs, shakes her head, because what the fuck is he talking about?

“Yeah? You know that after 15 minutes?”

“A hunch,” he says, his lips moving around the word in a way that’s really enticing, actually.

Allie almost invites him home with her then and there, but manages to wait a full hour before the words slip from her throat and he stands, reaches down for her hand and jerks his head in a random direction. But whatever. He’s game and they’re consenting adults and god, he makes her feel so fucking good she wonders, in her post-sex bliss, how they couldn’t be soulmates. 

He just says, “Fuck, Allie,” as he lies next to her, chest rising and falling with his breaths. 

If this is all she gets, she wants more, tells him as much and thinks he looks unfairly hot with that particular grin on his lips. But that could totally be influenced by the way he’s moving his hand between her thighs, too, giving her what she’s asked for.

-

Adrian is an investment banker with one crooked tooth and a little too much product in his hair. 

Spring’s parents are hippies, he says, and he doesn’t appreciate the way she tells him she thinks his hair looks stupid and white people shouldn’t wear dreadlocks and she doesn’t wait for the notification to tell her he’s not her soulmate, because if he is, she’d rather die alone.

Trey is five years older than her, very hot, very successful, and thinks all this is bullshit anyway, so they go on two dates and ignore the notifications on their phones. She ends up in his bed and thinks too hard about the fact that Harry’s calling her - she can see his name on her phone screen - when she’s literally fucking someone else. 

She has the urge to call him back two nights later and he doesn’t answer either. 

Eric is getting a PhD in computer science, tells her he’s too busy for relationships but his parents get pissed at him when they get updates that he’s ignoring all these dates he’s set up on. Allie nods politely and watches the exit until it’s appropriate timing to say she’s got to go.

Edward is old money, a townhouse in Beacon Hill and a hairstyle she thinks he’s probably had since he was a child. He doesn’t even have a full time job. He just says he works on a lot of ‘projects’. Harry texts her just as she’s finishing her drink. It’s rude to message him back as Edward is talking, but she doesn’t care. 

-

When she and Harry get set up a second time, they cut the shit and just meet at his place. He’s grinning at her when he opens the door. She likes that he’s barefoot, wearing jeans and a tee shirt with his hair curling at his forehead. He looks like he did in high school. Allie pushes past him and then grabs the front of his shirt when the door’s closed. 

“Right to the point, huh?” he asks, laughing, once she’s pulled her mouth away from his. Reluctantly. Really, she was just going to tell him to take her to bed.

“Why not?” She shrugs, reaches for the button on his jeans. 

He’s literally going down on her when their phones chime to tell them they’re not a match. He laughs against her, which feels better than it should, and as he’s slipping a finger inside her, moving up her body to drop a kiss to her lips, he says, “Maybe we should stop?”

She knows he’s joking, but she presses her hips into his hand anyway, says, “Shut up, Harry.”

-

Cary is a lawyer and too arrogant and makes her think of someone else and leaves the bar when they get the notification that this isn’t it. She doesn’t care. 

Astrid isn’t the first woman Allie’s ever been set up with, but she is the most beautiful and most interesting. They have a good night and say goodbye at the metro and Allie texts Becca to see how it’s going with Kelly. 

She and Harry meet a third time, for a drink, almost a year to the day after their first set up. She mentions she’s never been set up with the same person twice, let alone three times. He says he hasn’t either. They end up in her bed. Harry stays the night, leaves in the morning after making her come again. He winks at her before he leaves, says he’ll see her soon. It’s annoying, but she also thinks it’s true. 

Seth creeps her out and she leaves 16 minutes into the date and she thinks he’s watching her too closely as she gets into her Uber and she really doesn’t like that and doesn’t want to be alone. She doesn’t think twice about who she’s going to text for company. And Harry’s at her place when she gets there. 

-

She leaves her date with Phillip and goes straight to Harry’s house. It almost looks like he was expecting her. She’d told him she couldn’t meet because she had a date. 

“So?” he asks smugly, watching her take her jacket off. “How’d it go?”

“Really great,” she says sharply, mean little smile on her lips. “Wedding’s in June. Wanna come?”

Harry smirks at her, reaches for her hip, draws her in closer. “Pass.” Allie kisses him hard, sweeps her tongue into his mouth when he lets her, and presses him back against the wall in his foyer. “We could just say fuck it, you know.” She doesn’t want to think about what that means. “Do what we want. Be together.”

She rolls her eyes, kisses his neck. “Shut up, Harry. That’s stupid.”

“Not unheard of.”

She presses her hand into his pants. “Shut up, Harry,” she says again, a little softer, and he just nods, groans when she twists her wrist. 

Like, yeah, they keep ending up together like this, but that doesn’t mean…

Harry looks at her a little too tenderly when he’s finally pressed into her in his bed, pushes her hair back and she tries to match her breathing to his because he seems a lot more calm than she is. 

“I like you best,” he tells her, thumb pressing into the hinge of her jaw. “Out of everyone.” She wants him to stop talking like this. To move. To do what they do and then she can leave and that’s just...the way it goes, right? “Sometimes they get it wrong.”

“You barely know me.” He smiles a little, this pretty, genuine thing that makes her feel hopeless, or hopeful, or… “You can’t really think I’m your soulmate.”

He moves his hips gently, teasing her like he likes to do, looks far too satisfied that it pulls a noise from deep in her throat. 

“I know it’s never been like this with anyone else.”

She slides her hands down his back, knows this conversation is too serious for her to ignore it, but also just wanting him so badly. 

“Wanting it doesn’t mean it’s true. There’s obviously someone better for you than me.”

“Maybe I don’t care,” he tells her, moves again. Allie takes a breath and god, maybe...maybe she doesn’t care either. “You?”

“No,” she breathes, and honest to god, immediately feels a weight lift from her chest, feels lighter, somehow, than she has in years. She thinks the only times she’s even come close are all the times she’s been with him since they were first set up over a year ago. “Will you give me what I want now?”

He laughs, slides his hand up the back of her thigh, urges her to bend it higher. God, he feels so fucking good. 

“Yeah,” he says, and she was sort of just talking about sex, but he’s still looking at her softly, like he really might love her, or something absolutely stupid like that. “That’s all I want to do.”

She doesn’t mention that he’s completely misunderstood her question. She just puts both hands on his face and kisses him more gently than they usually do, and says, “Me, too,” because she thinks it’s true, anyway.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “i quit my dreaming the moment that i found you, i started dancing just to be around you”
> 
> (modern royals)

“Who’s that?” he asks, and he’s interrupting Helena, which he honestly knows better than to do, but she doesn’t seem entirely surprised. 

“Who?” she asks, and Harry points discreetly across the room, to the pretty blonde in the pale pink gown. “Her?” She laughs at him and he doesn’t know what’s so funny. “Allie Pressman. She’s a duchess, I think.”

Harry narrows his eyes. That makes no sense. He knows all the nobles around here. He particularly knows all the attractive ones around his age. 

“From where?”

Helena rolls her eyes at him. She knows his game. Or, at least that’s what she calls it. He just likes pretty girls with money. Is that a crime? She seems to think there’s something wrong with him sleeping with whoever he wants to. Which isn’t...He should say - whoever he wants to who is also his age and consenting. He’s got a title and generational wealth and a couple palaces within driving distance, just like most of the other people here. He’s just young and educated and also happens to know that at some point he’s going to have to settle down. It’s not that he’s just fucking around and not looking for that. He is. Sort of. This pretty woman across the room happens to be who he’s looking at right now.

“Vermont, I think? Maybe Maine?”

“The duchess from Maine is like, 65.”

Helena huffs, the black sequins on her dress sparkling under the chandelier. “Then it’s Vermont. Why don’t you just go introduce yourself, if you’re that interested?”

Harry grins, straightens his tie, asks her, jokingly, if he looks okay. She calls him arrogant and he thanks her, and she’s shaking her head as he walks away. 

As he’s approaching Allie, she grabs a glass of champagne off the tray a passing waiter is holding, takes a sip. Her hair is pinned back off her face in a way that’s pretty, but he sort of wonders what it’d look like with his hands all in it. 

“Duchess?” he says as he stands in front of her, and she looks him up and down, which is surprising. “Harry Bingham. Duke of Connecticut.”

Her brow goes up. “You’re Harry Bingham? I thought the Duke of Connecticut was a silver fox? A lawyer, or something.”

He smiles a little, looks down. She stops her rambling. “My dad. Let me correct myself. I’m Harry Bingham the Second. Duke of Connecticut.”

Her cheeks colour pink and she gives him a sympathetic look. “I’m so sorry. God, my mom’s one instruction for tonight was to not put my foot in my mouth.”

“It’s okay. This is actually better than people telling me I look just like him.” She laughs a little, sips her drink and he looks at the little pink mark her lipstick leaves on the crystal. “Why don’t we dance? Probably a better use of your feet.”

Shit. That was stupid.

But Allie smiles at him, sets down her glass and holds out her hand for him to take. “I’m actually also not a great dancer,” she warns him, and Harry laughs. 

“What are you good at, Allie?”

She blinks up at him as they step onto the floor and her hands move to the appropriate positions. “I haven’t told you my name.” He thinks he’s blushing. “Were you asking Helena Wu about me?”

Ah. So she was looking at him, too.

“Guilty as charged,” he says, beginning to lead her in an easy waltz he’s sure she can handle. “I figured I should at least know the name of the woman I couldn’t take my eyes off.” She tilts her head like that was a bad line, but she’s smiling like she liked it, too. “How come I’ve never seen you before?”

“I spend most of my time in England.” Okay, vague. “Cambridge.” His brow goes up. Her toe bumps his and she lets out this little laugh, looks at him like an apology. “My parents kind of sheltered us from all this stuff. But then my grandmother died, and my mom abdicated her title, and my sister thinks all this is bullshit. No offense.” Harry laughs. He finds her refreshing. “So. Duchess by default.”

“And…” The song switches and Harry easily changes his steps. Allie lets out this little sound like she’s surprised, but keeps up. “There’s no Duke of Vermont? Potential Duke?”

“You could just ask me if I’m single, Harry.” He likes that. Likes that even though she’s part of all this, she doesn’t seem to have all the pomp and pretense that everyone else has. 

He grins, pulls her closer with the hand that’s on her waist. “Are you single, Allie?” She nods, and Harry thinks he could honestly kiss her right here if that wasn’t so tacky. “Would you wanna get together sometime?”

She blinks up at him, flexes her fingers against his shoulder, and says, “Aren’t we together right now?” as if she likes this as much as he does and doesn’t want it to end, either. “Are you rushing to get rid of me?”

“No,” he tells her softly, smiles at her and hopes she can tell he means it. “Definitely not.”


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna be yours

The list of things he knows about Allie Pressman is short:

  1. They grew up in the same town. He’s got a couple memories tucked away from when they were little. He also remembers her in high school, standing somewhere usually right behind Cassandra’s shoulder. He used to call her a pitbull because of the way she’d snap out witty comments when he’d make Cassandra speechless.
  2. She lives in DC now, too.
  3. He thinks - suspects, or assumes - she went to Georgetown. But that’s only because he sees her once in a sweatshirt, grey and cut so it’s cropped and shows her stomach. 
  4. She’s hot. She’s always been hot. He liked her, in high school, thought she was always this confusing mix of adorable and wildly hot. But now…She’s kind of stunning. Catches his attention any time he sees her. 
  5. She must live somewhere near him, or she’s stalking him. He sees her around too much for there to be any other explanation. And he’s pretty sure she’s not stalking him, because she honestly barely notices him, if she does at all. 



-

He’s going to the office on a Saturday morning because he just...politics isn’t a 9-5 job, no matter how much the current administration likes to pretend it fucking is. He works for an organization that’s lobbying for education, and honestly, combating the absolutely fucking stupid shit that comes out of the current leadership’s offices is…

Anyway, he’s working on a Saturday. 

He’s just leaving his favourite cafe in the neighbourhood with a coffee and an almond croissant, taking a bite because he’s starving, when he sees Allie jogging towards him in tight leggings and a white sports bra, her hair in a high ponytail. 

She smiles when she notices him, as if she’s seeing him for the first time around here. Which he feels a bit weird about, honestly. He’s been noticing her for months. 

“Harry,” she says breathlessly, stopping in front of him, hands on her hips. He can’t help if he looks down. Well, he could help but he doesn’t. Allie just smiles, unbothered. “Wow. Long time no see.”

He clears his throat, wonders if he should tell her it hasn’t been that long. It feels creepy not to. “I’ve seen you. You live around here, too?”

She nods, uses her hand to wipe sweat from her upper lip, then lets out this little laugh. “Yeah. I moved like, six weeks ago?” She reaches up and pushes a curl off her face. “Sorry. I hate running. I’m gross.”

Harry doesn’t mean to let out this little laugh, but like… “No,” he says, and Allie presses her lips together. “Not from where I’m standing.”

She rolls her eyes, looking pleased, and shakes her head. “Some things never change, hm?”

He shrugs. Like, what does she want him to say? Is she surprised he still finds women attractive? Finds her attractive? 

“We should trade numbers,” he suggests, and her eyes shine a little, but she grabs her phone out of the pocket of her leggings at her thigh. He sees on the screen that she’s listening to some sad ass Taylor Swift song as she runs, which is weird. But whatever. He keys in his contact and sends himself a message. “I can show you around the neighbourhood.”

“I know the neighbourhood,” Harry, she says, looking up at him from under her lashes. “What else you got?”

Harry laughs, a little thrown. Is she literally just inviting him to try harder? “Whatever you want?”

Allie smiles like she thinks that answer is amusing and maybe a little hot, then looks away before tapping her earbud to start her music again, says, “We’ll see about that.”

And then she starts jogging again, passes him, and all he can do is smile and turn around and watch her go. 

-

So, his list is growing: 

  1. She hates running, but she does it for a half hour four times a week because ‘heart health and shit’.
  2. She works for this high end fashion brand based out of New York, heads up their e-commerce division and works from a home office, travels a couple times a month to New York, once a year to Paris and Milan. 
  3. She wears this SPF lip balm that tastes like brown sugar and makes him let out this little sound the first time he kisses her.
  4. She doesn’t have sex on the first date, and laughs at all his half-hearted attempts to get her to change her mind after she tells him this fact.
  5. She likes really spontaneous shit, like ordering McFlurries on UberEats at 10am on a Sunday and having them delivered to them in the park where she’s insisted they spend the morning. Or walking down the Mall after dark in the heat, running up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and doing this really fucking adorable little spin at the top, her curls moving around her face, and slipping her hand into his when he joins her. 



-

He lives in a row house his grandfather bought him when he said he was moving to the city. Allie lives on the first floor of a house that’s been split up into rental units; a big bay window in the front she’s got lined with plants, a cute little kitchen with a blue tile backsplash, and a bedroom decorated in soft pinks and greys. 

The first time he presses her back against her bed, they’ve been seeing each other for over a month and she surprised him after work by texting him that she really wanted District Taco and he couldn’t let her eat alone, to meet her there at 6:30 ‘or else’. He doesn’t know what that meant, but he thought it was fucking cute, so he leaves a couple emails unanswered and kisses her when he sees her waiting for him. 

In her bed afterward, when he’s fucking roasting and Allie’s in his arms, pressed against him and their skin is slick with sweat because yeah, this place definitely doesn’t have central air like his does, Allie lets out this little breath he kind of falls for. 

“I like you,” she says, and makes it sound like it's an inconvenience or a surprise, which makes him laugh. 

“Oh, yeah?” He strokes his thumb against her bare shoulder, like a reminder they literally just had sex. He’d hope she likes him. But it’s also not even the sex - like, honestly, he’s definitely had sex with people he didn’t particularly care for. He’s definitely never been on this many dates with someone he didn’t like. 

“Mm. Like, a lot.” Her voice is softer now, and Harry smiles, stares up at her ceiling. She leans up, plants her hand on the mattress so her arm’s straight, and pretends to scowl, but just ends up looking really fucking cute. “What’s up with that?”

“I dunno,” he answers, curving his hand up over her waist, tugging a little. She comes closer, which is what he wanted. “I like you, too.”

She smiles, looks like she’s trying to keep her cool but failing, which, as it turns out, is a look he likes really kind of a lot, too.

“Do you?” she asks, and he half wants to roll his eyes, but half wants to play this little game she’s playing. “You wanna be mine?”

Harry swallows, because fuck, he thinks all he’s wanted for two weeks at least is for them to make this a more serious thing. 

So he nods, eyes dropping to her lips and the back up to meet hers, and says, “Yeah. I wanna be yours.”

They sound like goddamn grade school valentines, but Allie leans over and kisses him, her tongue pressing against his, and he feels a little more grown after that. 

-

It’s now a long list, but some highlights: 

  1. Her family is surprised, but too polite and too logical to think he’s the same as he was in high school. Her mom makes tiramisu cheesecake and puts her hand on her chin as she asks him questions about his life. Her dad pats him on the shoulder as he sets an after-dinner drink down in front of Harry at the table. He gets invited to Thanksgiving, and goes. 
  2. Allie replies, “You do not,” when he tells her he loves her the first time, but then laughs and clasps her hands around the back of his neck and asks, “Really?” and smiles all big when he nods. 
  3. She snores a little. Just sometimes. She tells him he talks in his sleep, and he thinks she’s joking when he asks her what he said and she replies, “My name,” with her eyes all dark. Yeah. Yeah, she’s gotta be joking, right?
  4. She takes her coffee with so much milk he tells her she should just drink cappuccinos, and she sits atop his kitchen counter in her bra and underwear as he makes her one. So that becomes her coffee order and it’s just so much more sophisticated than dumping out half a drip coffee and topping up the cup with skim milk. She calls him a snob but he just accepts it. 
  5. The whole house seems lighter after she’s moved in. It’s her blonde hair and all the pastels in the closet now. It’s the way they search for a week for bedding they both like that feels like them. It’s the way all her Scandinavian home office furniture fits into the second bedroom they make her office. It’s her getting up early for runs and pulling the curtains back to wake him up. The way she likes to leave him little notes written on post-its and the backs of receipts. The way she’s really not lying even a little when she says his life’s obviously so much better now that she’s around all the time.




	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would die for you in secret

She absolutely got an MBA so she could be the best goddamn administrative assistant anyone’s ever seen. And she’s only doing that so she can be the best goddamn chief of staff anyone’s ever seen. 

She started working for Harry when he was an associate and she had a couple years’ experience under her belt. Literally, her third day on the job, after one of the other admin’s trained her on some of the software and where everything was at the firm, he called Allie into his office and asked her to shut the door at like 5:30. It was a Friday, and he’d said he still had an hour or so of work left to do, but he grabbed two glasses and a bottle of scotch from his bottom drawer and they toasted to her first week. 

That was 5 years and a whole other firm ago. When he moved on to this new place, he told them it’d be in their best interest to make Allie an offer, too, because she’s the best in the business, and he can’t work without her. He’d told her he was going to do it. Allie’d still refreshed her resume anyway, just in case. But he managed to negotiate her a six figure salary, and even though she’d tried to be annoyed at him for speaking for her, negotiating for her, deciding she was better off with him than staying at the firm or finding something on her own…

“Come on,” he’d told her at the end of their first day, in his new office with the amazing view of the city. He’d...He’d looked good, even as smug as he was, in his navy suit, leaning back in his chair. “We did good, Allie.”

“We haven’t done anything, Harry,” she’d laughed, but then poured them both a drink, sat right there atop his desk and said, “Cheers.”

If she had to pinpoint the moment her feelings for him started, it would probably be the time this woman he was seeing ended it but he’d already bought her spot at an $850 a plate charity thing and he’d told Allie to come with him instead. Called her beautiful and his best friend and the only one he really wanted to spend time with just so he could sweeten the deal. Allie’d pulled on a black dress she rented at the last minute, and absolutely noticed his reaction. (His reaction was to take a breath, smile, raise a brow, and look her up and down.) 

That was two years ago. She’s been in love with him - truly - most of the time since then. Tried to date other people, and whatever. Even had a full relationship Harry has yet to really comment on whatsoever. 

He’s her boss, and they’ve got big plans, things they want to achieve together, and there’s no way it will or ever could happen. 

-

“Allie,” he says, leaning out his office door in that way that’s more of a beckoning than anything else. She gets up, grabs her notepad and her coffee - a mid-afternoon bad habit she blames him for - and walks in, closes the door behind her. 

He checks her out. She doesn’t miss it. She doesn’t ever miss it. It happens often enough. 

(Honestly, she thinks they’re as bad as each other. But then she worries that’s all in her head.)

“What?” she laughs, finally, when he doesn’t say anything. 

“What should I get my mom for her birthday?” Allie was just lowering herself into one of the chairs across from his desk, but scoffs, rolls her eyes, and stands upright again. 

“Figure it out,” she tells him, and turns towards the door. “Some of us have jobs to do.”

“No, wait,” he laughs, and Allie turns back to face him, her head tilted like she’s unimpressed, with her hand on the door knob. “Come back.”

Allie moves her hair over her shoulder. He watches that, too. “What do you need, Harry?”

He grins at her, reaches for his own coffee cup. (See, he’s got an espresso machine in here, and - schedule permitting - they break every day around 3:00 and he makes them...It doesn’t matter.) 

“Maybe I just wanted to look at you in that dress.” 

Allie lets out a noise she means to be a laugh, but she thinks it falls flat. She shakes her head at him, raises her brow. “Is there anything else?”

Looking properly flirtatious, he asks, “If I say yes, will you stay longer?”

And see, this is all normal. It’s stupid. They’re stupid. 

She’s a little too serious when she tells him, “Not if you’re lying.” 

He’s still smiling when she leaves.

-

She almost kisses him one night when they’re working late and he’s complaining about a case and then Allie proposes a way forward, an avenue he hasn’t tried. He sits back against his sofa next to her, his arm sort of behind her. 

“You’re fucking brilliant,” he says. It’s way too soft for him not to mean it; for it not to mean something. 

Allie’s leaning in and thinking about how good he looks even this close, but then stops herself, and they just glance at each other like they both know what was just about to happen. 

They don’t talk about it. They just go back to work.

-

He goes on a date with a woman he went to law school with. Allie manages his schedule and when she sees an appointment she didn’t put in there, she goes into his office and asks him about it, and then promptly wishes she hadn’t. He says, “I’m having dinner with Blair,” while he’s looking through papers for this SEC violation case one of his best clients is currently embroiled in. 

Allie just says, “Oh,” and nothing else, and he only looks up to meet her eye right before she closes the door behind her on her way out. 

When he shows up at her place the evening of the date, a bottle of wine in his hand and a handsome look on his face, she knows she shouldn’t let him in. She knows she should ask what’s wrong. 

Harry clouds her better judgment. When he’s pouring her third glass of wine and she’s pressing play on the next episode of the show they’re watching, he just laughs and says, “Sure, I do.” 

He sets his hand on her shin when she drapes her legs over his lap. She watches him watch his thumb move back and forth before making herself look away. 

-

Allie applies for a Chief of Staff job because she’s got a connection who can make a referral. She thinks she’s too young and not experienced enough, but she knows how to use her network to her advantage. 

She takes a full day off for the interview, and assumes he still doesn’t know, and then in the evening when she’s being overly analytical about how she answered certain questions and how she thinks it might’ve gone, he shows up at her door. 

She should’ve known he’d find out. 

“What the fuck, Allie?” he asks, and she doesn’t invite him in. Doesn’t want to invite him in if he’s going to be an asshole. “If you want more money…” 

“I don’t want…” She sighs. She does want more money, but it’s not about that. She doesn’t want to lie to him. “It’s not about the money.”

“Well, then what...We said we’d…”

“Come in,” she says, and probably doesn’t need to grab his wrist like that, but whatever. 

He turns, and she’s just locking the door, and she’s not uncomfortable at all with the way she’s between him and the door. No, she’s not uncomfortable at all, but she just...This is it. This is why she wants to leave. 

“We said we’d grow together. I’d be Partner and you’d be Chief of Staff.” He’s right. They did say that. Then she went and fell in love with him and she can’t have both. She can’t have everything. “What are you doing?”

She doesn’t appreciate the way he’s making that an accusation, making it sound like she’s doing this specifically to hurt him. 

“I can’t keep doing this, Harry,” she says quietly, smiling just a little in hopes this frustrated energy he has will dissipate. She wants to reach out and touch him. Maybe he can tell, or something, because he moves just a touch closer. “Hiding the fact that I’m…” She loses her nerve. But he looks like he knows what she’s going to say and wants her to do it. They’re both being fucking selfish. They might as well really go for it. So she meets his eyes, and his chin tips up just the tiniest bit. “In love with you.” 

She watches him blink. She watches him move forward. Watches him wet his bottom lip. Watches the way he almost smiles when she’s backed against the door. 

“Don’t leave because of that,” he says, and she feels so fucking stupid. Childish. Like the high school weirdo in love with the popular guy. Like he’s treating this like a little crush that only affects her and she’ll get over it. “We can still do all the things we said.”

Allie shakes her head. She thinks she might cry. She puts her hands on his waist under his suit jacket. He glances at her mouth. Fuck. 

“And this?” she asks, meeting his eyes. He really looks like he wants her. “Are we ignoring it? Or keeping it a secret.” 

He sighs like he knows she’s right. Then he smirks. Which she wants to hate, but doesn’t. “We’ve been keeping it a secret all along, haven’t we?”

If he’s saying ‘we’ while just talking about her…

“Have we?” she asks, and then gets pissed at herself for not just being direct. “Harry, if you don’t…”

“I do,” he whispers, interrupting. Then there’s that little smile again. The one she sees so rarely but has gotten a couple times already tonight. “Come on. You know I do.”

“So.” She moves her arms, drapes them over his shoulders and pulls him closer so their bodies are pressed together. He sucks in a breath, hands going to her hips and then moving up easily to her waist, pressing warmly through her shirt. “Keeping it a secret?”

He says, “Whatever you want,” and she believes him.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite

The first time she hooks up with him, she’s literally got tears crusting in the corners of her eyes, and she’s about 40 minutes single and thinking all guys are assholes. And Harry’s got a girlfriend but also doesn't stop Allie from pressing him back against his bed in this stupid dorm room he’s living in. 

They’re fully naked by the time he works up the nerve to ask, “What are you doing?” and she replies, “I don’t care,” and he knows it’s a really terrible idea to not stop this, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t. 

-

Because he’s wanted Allie since he met her, since she asked if he wanted to be her study partner because everyone else was annoying as fuck. He only started dating someone after Allie started dating someone. He isn’t sure she even actually clocked the timing on that.

-

They don’t talk about it. Allie meets him in the library like usual on Wednesday at 6:30. She’s eating the last of a slice of pizza and acts like nothing happened. Harry’s fine with that. He can go with it. 

She says, “Stop looking at me,” sometime around 10:00, when he’s distracted and thinking about her instead of responding to his girlfriend’s messages. 

“I’m not.”

He is.

Allie gives him a look and smiles and asks how much longer he wants to stay. It’s all so fucking normal it makes him want to scream. 

“I’m not good with attention,” she says like a confession. Harry doesn’t know how to respond, necessarily. “Sometimes it just...feels bad.”

He narrows his eyes, considering what she’s saying. “When I do it?”

She shrugs, keeps her eyes on her books, and it feels like forever until she says, “No. Not when you do it.”

-

She doesn’t show the next Wednesday, and she doesn’t answer his messages or the phone when he calls, and he ends up in her building knocking on her dorm room door. Her roommate answers and leaves before he enters. 

Allie’s in bed on her side, facing the wall with her covers pulled up. 

“What’s up with you?” he asks, and she says, “Nothing,” and he doesn’t want to leave her like this. He knows it’s not nothing. He can see the signs. He’s been here before. 

He doesn’t expect her to talk to him. And she doesn’t. 

-

She shows up at the same party he’s at on Friday night with his girlfriend. Allie’s drunk when she gets there and then spends the night sipping beer and talking to one of the frat guys who lives here and Harry can’t take his eyes off her. 

“She looks a little desperate,” his girlfriend says, and Harry…

He doesn’t disagree, really, but he doesn’t like that she said it out loud. 

Two drinks later, his girlfriend tells him someone should go do something about this. As if Allie’s a thing to be handled, or something.

He wraps his hand around Allie’s arm and then it somehow ends up on her waist and she’s definitely drunk as fuck when she looks up at him. Her eyes are barely focusing.

“Maybe you should stop?” he suggests gently, and Allie looks right at his mouth and nods once, emphatic, and then puts her arms over his shoulders. He’s super fucking aware his girlfriend is in the room. “Want help getting home?”

She shakes her head, then lets out a little laugh, and says, “Not alone.” 

It’s the easiest thing in the world, to leave with her instead of his girlfriend.

(It’s not easy for his girlfriend. She sort of hates it. Breaks up with him in front of enough people that he should be embarrassed, but isn’t.) 

He doesn’t sleep with Allie when she’s drunk as hell, because he’s not a fucking scumbag. She kisses him when he gets her into her room, pulls him into bed with her and tells him to stay. 

-

Wednesday, she apologizes for being a drunk idiot, and he tells her it’s fine, and she shakes her head like she knows it’s not fine. That she’s not fine. 

“Wanna get out of here?” he asks before they even open their books. Allie nods all fast and looks like she might cry any second. It’s killing him. 

They’re in his room - a single, thank fuck. He left his closet doors open, and Allie’s running her fingers along his shirts, or whatever, when he grabs two ginger ales from his mini fridge. 

“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with me,” she admits, and her eyes are shining, and Harry lets out a breath and tries to think of how to delicately tell her that he does. “Or why you’re the only one I feel like I can talk to.”

He shouldn’t reach out and push her hair back a little, but he does. She catches his wrist, holds his hand against her neck like that, and closes her eyes as she takes a deep breath. This tear rolls down her cheek and maybe he’s fucking in love with her or something, because he thinks he’s more affected by that tear - by this sadness she’s carrying around - than he is by anything else. 

“I wanna help,” he says. Her eyes open and she almost smiles. Almost. But not quite. 

“You are.”

He’s got a bunch of ideas. Find her a therapist - his could refer her to some people, or something. Talk about meds. Talk about not drinking. Drop a class. 

And he knows what it’s like, okay? He knows what it feels like and how nothing feels rational or real or within reach. And how being grounded by someone’s legitimate care for you can be the difference. 

“Can I tell you something?” he asks, and Allie wipes her face, lets his wrist go. He leaves his hand there, puts the other on her waist. She leans towards him like she likes the contact. She nods a little, lets out this soft laugh. “I think you might be my favourite person.”

Allie leans against him, presses her hands into his back. After a moment and a few steadying breaths, she says, “Thanks, Harry,” so quietly he has to strain to hear her.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?

She sees him as soon as she walks in, smooths her hand over the waist of her fancy dress, this thing she spent a wild amount on specifically for this party. Party sounds inaccurate. It’s more of an event. Someone offers to take her coat, and someone else offers her a glass of champagne. 

Harry Bingham meets her eyes from across the room a second time since she walked in, and she ignores it and walks in the opposite direction. 

She’s not here for him. 

God, she wishes she were here for him. 

-

She’s in the middle of a conversation with Helena, who owns this amazing place on the Upper East Side, with its marble floors and its high ceilings. Family money. The kind of family money Allie has, too. The kind of family money Harry has. 

She should stop thinking about him. 

“Have you met everyone?” Helena asks. 

Allie presses her lips together, then stops, afraid to ruin her lipstick. She says, “No,” because...well she hasn’t. 

Not here. Not in this timeline. 

-

Harry looks better than she remembers. Better up close. Better when he’s smiling and looks like he’s trying to remember…

No. 

No, that’s not what’s happening. 

She nearly panics when he says, “Have we met?” in this incredibly sincere way that makes her think…

People don’t remember her. That’s part of this whole thing. That’s how it works. She can shift undetected. It’s important. 

She just says, “No,” all sweetly, and absolutely should not say, “I’d remember you,” at all, let alone in such a flirty voice, but god, it’s impossible not to want him. 

She always wants him. 

-

She’s considering smoking a cigarette, because maybe in this timeline she’ll be a smoker, you know? It sort of feels like it suits this rich, entitled, socialite persona she has here. 

When she’s standing on the balcony, Harry brings her another glass of champagne - one she doesn’t exactly need - and he’s still looking at her like he’s trying to figure her out. 

“I swear I know you,” he says, and Allie clenches her teeth, takes a sip of her drink and then swallows too hard. “And I have better game than that, so if I were just hitting on you, that’s not what I’d open with.”

Allie leans against the railing, pushes her hair off her shoulder, tilts her chin up. “You’re not hitting me?”

He grins a little, his hair blowing a little in the wind. “I said I’m not just hitting on you.”

Allie lets out a laugh, asks, “What do you do, Harry?” because she wants to know what it is this time. 

Law? Architecture? God, that one time he was a writer. Drank too much coffee and locked himself away in the office at all hours until she sat herself across his lap and convinced him to come to bed. 

“I’m the Executive Director of this foundation,” he says, and she freezes, her glass halfway to her lips, and…

They’ve talked about this before. Two timelines ago. When he was finishing his PhD. 

“Oh yeah?”

He nods, plays with his pinky ring. A constant. It makes her feel better. “We’re trying to get mental health resources in more schools, basically.”

She says, “Wow,” like she’s impressed - she is impressed, even if this isn’t entirely new to her. “That’s really amazing. You must be proud.”

She’s pushing it. She knows she is. She knows feeling pride - having people tell him they’re proud of him - is a thing for him. Something he craves. Something he needs. She shouldn’t be doing this so soon. She knows they’ll end up together. They always end up together. 

She shouldn’t rush it. No matter how much she wants to. 

-

She’s starving. She sneaks into the kitchen and convinces the chef to give her a double portion of the lamb and polenta. She’s sufficiently charming, leans against the counter and stays out of the woman’s way. 

This reminds her of when she was a kid. Growing up in a small town with Harry. Chasing each other around the kitchen island until that one time she hit her head on the corner of the counter and his mom told them not to do it again. 

Reminds her of when she was 15. Staying home for the first time entirely on her own. Him coming over because she got scared. Her first kiss with him - with anyone - in the kitchen when she was making them instant hot chocolate.

Reminds her of that party in high school when they went to that arts school. When he was going to be an actor. Him holding her hand and leading her through the crowd. Telling her she looked pretty and then standing between her knees when she was sitting on the counter. 

Harry walks in, now, sees her, watches her. She swears he runs his fingertips over the edge of the corner of the island, his brow furrowed like he knows the same things she does. 

“Looks like we had the same idea,” he tells her, and Allie just nods instead of revealing that, you know, there’s really no such thing as coincidence.

-

Campbell arrives just as Harry’s leaving. She’s got her eyes on the door because he was supposed to be here by now. She watches Harry pulling on his jacket when Campbell blows through the door in a suit that looks less expensive than the clothes of anyone else attending this event. 

He barely spares a glance at Harry. Harry doesn’t pay attention to him at all. 

Good. They haven’t met each other yet. 

Campbell’s eyes land on her and he smirks like he knows exactly what she’s here for. Good. 

He walks past her like they don’t know each other at all. Also good. 

Allie rests her hand on Harry’s arm as he pushes a hand through his hair and goes to leave. 

“Will you meet me somewhere?” she asks, and it’s too bold, and he’ll get the wrong idea, and it’s…

“I know I should say no,” he tells her, and yeah, that’s usually part of this, too. He’s not exactly easy to get. “But yeah.”

She smiles, gives him an address and tells him she’ll be there in a couple hours. He tells her she’s gonna have to maybe explain some of the hot, mysterious stranger energy she’s exuding. 

Allie looks up at him from under her lashes. “I promise I’m not that mysterious,” she tells him, instead of telling him they’re not strangers. Not really at all.

-

A few months later, he asks her if she believes in love at first sight. 

Allie smiles a little too widely, nods slowly.

It’s definitely not the same, but god, that’s what she feels every time she sees him. So maybe it’s close enough.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I can see you starin', honey, like he's just your understudy, like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me."

Harry’s not a fighter. She knows this maybe better than anyone. He’s more likely to walk away than he is to throw a punch. His preferred method of engaging in conflict is using words to make someone else feel like an absolute idiot. Allie told him once she thought he got a sick satisfaction from it. He’d looked at her like he wasn’t sure why she was saying that like it was a bad thing. 

But she watches his jaw twitch as he raises his glass to his lips and locks eyes with her. And then she notices the way his hand flexes at his side when Matthew makes her laugh. Allie thinks this is possibly the angriest she’s ever seen him, and that includes the time she found out his financial advisor mismanaged a large sum of money, and…

She’s way too deep in her head, thinking about how much he must actually value her, and then nods when Matthew asks her if she’s okay. He squeezes her hand and then lets go, and Allie takes the opportunity to excuse herself and says she’s just going to get some air. 

She finds a spot by the water, at the end of this dock that has a bench on it. She wraps her scarf around herself and sits down, slips her hands under her thighs. 

She’s thinking about Harry Bingham way too much considering he’s not her ex. They were never even together. They kissed once - while very, very drunk - and then laughed it off. She secretly thought he wanted more and just wasn’t willing to say it. She secretly thought if he’d said it she would’ve wanted to try. 

It’s making her head spin to see his reaction to her showing up here with someone else. With Matthew, who she’s been seeing for a little over a month. She and Harry haven’t hung out recently. Haven’t hung out since last semester. She wasn’t expecting him to be here. 

She wasn’t expecting one kiss to ruin their friendship. 

“Isn’t this how horror movies start?” she hears behind her, and then looks at her lap and smiles before glancing up at Harry, standing next to her now in his wool coat, two glasses in his hand. 

“You planning on pushing me in?” she asks, and Harry breathes a laugh, holds out a glass to her, then sits down. There’s space between it. She’s tempted to measure it, honestly. Like, three hands and three months of silence separating them. “It was getting loud in there.”

Harry hums, sips his drink. One of her favourite things about them was always their ability to be quiet together. God, one day last summer they drove to this very lake, to the little public beach, and she read an entire book lying there on a towel next to his. Her shoulders had gotten pink. His skin had bronzed and he’d looked so devastating she almost risked it all right then and there. 

She’s realizing maybe she was never actually honest with him. 

“It’s pretty here,” she says, mostly just to break the silence. 

He waits, then says, “I’m surprised you came.” She doesn’t know why he’d be surprised. She was thinking the same thing about him. “I thought you hated stuff like this.”

She shrugs. She does. It’s all a little rustic for her. Sleeping in cabins or tents, or whatever. She doesn’t want to tell him that Matthew wanted to come and convinced her it’d be fun. 

“I thought you did, too.” Harry’s smiling when he looks down, then back at her. The moon is high in the sky and reflecting off the water, making him look so beautiful it makes her mad. “What’d Becca do to convince you?”

He holds his glass up a little, says, “You’re drinking it,” and Allie laughs out loud, the sound echoing off the water. “How’ve you been?”

Allie shrugs, which is not what she wanted to do. Not that she’s spent a lot of time thinking about what she’d say if she saw him again, if they ever ran into each other or if he ever reached out. It’s just also not accurate to say that she’s not thought about it at all. And all night, since she walked in and saw him here, she knew eventually they’d talk and he’d ask something like this, and the reality is, she’s doing really well. 

She just misses him, too. 

She’s about to say something about doing well, about being excited for the end of the school year. 

But Harry asks, “Who’s the guy?” like he doesn’t give a damn that he shouldn’t, and like he’s also not interested in pretending the way they’ve left things isn’t about this. Them.

“Matthew,” she answers, and then is immediately mad at herself, because she knows that’s not what he was asking, and she’s tired of all this pretending. “You’re jealous.”

Harry smiles. She can’t decide if she finds it audacious or irritating or both of those at once. 

He doesn’t say anything. She tilts her head expectantly, and he laughs again. “Was that a question?” He’s being annoying. “What should I say? Yeah. I’m jealous. It’s a shitty feeling.” He sits back on the bench, leans his elbows against it. His hand’s right next to her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting to see you with someone.”

Okay, that feels insulting. She turns sharply and her shoulder brushes against his hand. He doesn’t move. He’s clearly too bold for that.

“Why shouldn’t I be with someone? And what right do you have to be jealous?”

He answers, “None,” easily, but doesn’t answer the other question. She isn’t going to make him. She takes a sip of her drink. It’s smoother than she was expecting. Tastes a little like caramel on her tongue after she’s swallowed. “I shouldn’t have let shit happen with us the way it did.” 

Allie feels her heart beat faster. She wants to hate him for saying this when she’s seeing someone and not before. But she also wants to hear the rest of what he has to say. 

“No?” she asks, and Harry smiles in response, like he knows it means something that she’s entertaining this and not shutting it down. He’s right, of course.

“Yeah.” He turns a little more, his knee pressing against hers, his arm along the back of the bench, fingers brushing her shoulder blade. “Look, all I’d wanted for a while was to kiss you. I didn’t want it to go down the way it did, and then I thought we’d just messed up our shot.” 

Allie stares at him a moment, then shakes her head, looks back out at the water and rests her glass on her thigh. 

“You’re an idiot.” Harry laughs, sips his drink. “All you had to do was say you wanted to try again.” He doesn’t say anything. She thinks they’re both stupid, honestly. “And when you didn’t, I should’ve.” 

He still doesn’t look at her. She can tell he’s trying to sound calm when he asks, “You wanted to?” She nods, because she doesn’t think she really owes him more than that, you know? “Well, do you still?”

She should’ve anticipated that, shouldn’t she? 

“I’m seeing Matthew.”

“That’s not an answer,” he says, though it is, really, isn’t it? He looks right at her. She wonders what he sees, because he smiles a little, then hides it away again. “Would you be seeing Matthew if we’d figured out how to do this?”

She wants to ask what this is, but also that’s a stupid question. There’s no reason to think they would’ve actually been good together. (But there’s also no reason to think they wouldn’t have, right?) She wants to be honest. 

“I don’t know,” she says, and Harry seems to see right through that. “Probably not.”

He pauses, then moves closer, so his arm is around her still and his hip is pressed against hers. 

“You should do something about that.”

He says it so casually it should bother her. She sort of means to say that, but what she does instead is take a deep breath and - though she doesn’t say it out loud - agree with him.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that you drunk dialed me to tell me you loved me?”

Okay, so he’s not going to be smug about it. He’s not. 

(He is. But it’s based on the fact that he’s so fucking flattered someone like her would deign to even consider loving someone like him. It’s all overcompensation for his insecurities. His fear that he’s unlovable. This fucked up thing he tells himself for no good goddamn reason other than his brain likes to be mean to him.)

But he’s not being smug to tease her. It’s not even like that. 

He thinks about it all day. Her voice on the phone and her words. And he’s not stupid, okay? It was three in the morning and she was out with friends celebrating someone getting a promotion.

’Someone’ is her sister. Who he works with. Who doesn’t like him and isn’t thrilled he’s dating Allie. But like, if Cassandra didn’t want him to be interested in Allie, she shouldn’t have brought her to the staff picnic. What was he supposed to do? Not be attracted to her? Get real. Look at her. He didn’t stand a chance. 

(And for the record, the only reason he isn’t bothered by Cassandra’s promotion is she doesn’t work in his department. No competition, really. It doesn’t have anything to do with him. And is he definitely also not bothered because he got promoted before her anyway? Yes.)

This is by far the best relationship he’s ever been in, and Allie’s probably the best person he’s ever known. He’s not exaggerating. She really is super kind and generous and patient, but also doesn’t fuck around or take shit from anyone. 

Look, the thing about her saying ‘I love you’ is that he’s wanted to say it for a while and has been too scared to do it and put himself out there. It’s not like they’ve been together for a year, or anything. It’s only been four months. But that apparently doesn’t matter to his feelings, and maybe it doesn’t matter to hers, either. 

They didn’t have plans to get together today, and that’s fine. She likes to nurse her hangovers on her own, which is a thing he knows. And he had lunch plans with his sister, anyway. So he just texts Allie a good morning message and tells her to let him know if she needs anything. She sends back the two pink hearts - so that kind of does him in, too - and then says she’s going back to sleep but she’ll text later. And she does do that. They’re messaging in the evening and she admits she orders McDonald’s, and that she feels a little better, but drinking that much champagne was a bad idea because she felt like shit all day. Harry thinks it’s sort of cute when she asks if he wants to watch the next episode of this show they’ve been watching together. They keep texting throughout. When they finally say goodnight, she tells him to sleep well and that’s kind of that. 

It’s not that this isn’t all typical. It’s super typical, and that’s what’s weird about it. He tries not to think he’s just being selfish and wants to hear her say it again. 

(But he does. And he wants to say it back this time instead of her just continuing to talk and then saying goodnight before he can really go for it. Not that he was going to say it when she was that drunk anyway. No, he sort of likes that it was just her saying it. Sort of wants to know that she really hears it when he tells her. Good god, he’s being a fucking sap about this. It just feels important, okay?)

He goes back to work on Monday and doesn’t mention anything to Cassandra about how he knows Saturday night went when he sees her in the cafeteria in the morning when he’s grabbing breakfast and she’s making herself some tea. He just says good morning, because he’s not an asshole, and she smiles back and then goes back to her conversation with one of their other colleagues. 

Allie comes over on Tuesday evening like they’d planned. Her Mondays are always insane because she’s got back to back meetings from 10 until 3. Jesus, he knows too much about her. He feels weird about it, right up to the moment he opens the door and she smiles up at him, kisses him once she’s inside and wraps her hand all up in his tie like she likes to do when he’s wearing one. 

“Hey,” he says, hands on her waist, and she looks past him towards the kitchen. He’d told her he was making dinner. It does smell good. He knows she loves that he can cook, and that he does it for her pretty regularly. 

“Hi. I love this colour,” she says, tugging on his tie. It’s this dark bluish green colour he bought before they met because the salesperson pressured him into it even though he didn’t need another tie. She’s seen him wear it before. He thinks she’s mentioned before that she likes it.

“Do you?” he asks, sort of grinning down at her, and she just nods and leans up to kiss him again. She pulls away, says something about going to change. He’s left standing there in his kitchen wondering if she even remembers what she said the other night. 

He wouldn't be surprised if she didn’t. He’d just hate it, that’s all.

He joins her, because the soffritto is just sweating away in the pan and can be left unattended for a minute. He’s tugging his tie loose as she pulls her sweatshirt over her head. It’s this pink one he loves. Loves it even more that she’s wearing nothing but her underwear. He watches her pull her leggings up over her hips as he unbuttons his shirt. 

“What?” she asks, laughing. “Stare much?”

“Should I stop?”

She smiles at him, swats his ass on the way by and asks if he wants to hear the latest shit Caroline pulled at work. Harry finishes changing and goes back to the kitchen, where she’s pushing things around in the pot because she just can’t leave things alone. He bumps her hip with his to get her out of the way, takes the wooden spoon from her as she talks to him about this woman she doesn’t like who works at her company. 

Honestly, by the time their plates are cleared, he can’t fucking take it anymore. 

He can’t help it if he lets out a scoff after he’s asked how her night really was on Saturday and she’s said, “Fun.” 

Like, seriously? Is that all she’s gonna give him? Sure, they caught up about it over text, but if he’s being honest, that’s really not what he was asking. 

“What?” she asks, eyes narrowed like she can tell there’s something more, just from his reaction alone. 

“You don’t...” He said that way too fucking softly, and he ducks his head a bit. He feels like he’s losing his nerve. God, he should just fucking tell her he loves her. Wouldn’t that be easier? 

She blinks at him, this adorable confused little look on her face, and squints a little like she’s lost in this conversation. 

“What?” She lets out a quiet laugh, then sets her elbow on the table and leans towards him. He could just push forward and kiss her, tell her it’s nothing. It’d be easy to do. Not that she’d buy it. No, she’d press him to tell her, wouldn’t she? “You’re being all broody.”

“I am not,” he says, which is a weak defense at best and just makes her smile at him as she waits for him to just fucking come out with it. Fine. “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that you drunk dialed me to tell me you loved me?” 

He literally watches the colour stain her cheeks, the way her mouth opens, then closes, and her eyes get a little wild. He tilts his head, hoping he hasn’t fucked up by blurting it out that way.

“I did not do that.”

Oh. She so remembers. She absolutely remembers. He can tell when she’s lying because she tips her chin towards the floor and tries to be overly serious. He knows this about her. 

Harry leans forward, rests his forearm on the table, fills the space she just moved out of. He doesn’t want her to run away. God, that’s the last thing he wants. 

“Hand to god,” he says quietly, knows he’s grinning at her. Her eyes don’t leave his, and then he sees her trying not to smile. “Do you?” He pauses, glances down when she sets her hand on his knee, her own legs bracketing it with how they’re sitting. “Love me?”

She takes a steadying breath, sets her fingers under his chin to make him look at her. She just nods instead of saying anything, which is a little perfect, you know? He smiles too widely, then she moves her hand along his jaw. 

He should say something. He has to say something. 

“Allie,” he says quietly, and god, she looks fucking beautiful like this. 

She smiles like she knows exactly what he’s saying by the way he’s said her name alone. 

She leans forward, gives him the sweetest kiss she ever has, and Harry really lets himself enjoy how good he feels when he’s with her.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but the dog loves me more.”

Allie buys her first house when she’s 28. By house, she means condo, and by ‘buys’, she means takes out a mortgage that literally actually makes her cry because what the fuck is she even doing? 

The housing market just took a dip, and she let people pressure her into thinking she should invest in real estate, and she does ultimately think it’s a good decision, it’s just a lot, you know? She spends weeks and weeks painting and updating things and choosing decor items to match the space. 

The thing about condos is you have to deal with neighbours. She honestly would’ve loved to have bought an actual house, but she definitely didn’t have enough for a downpayment on anything other than a rundown place that she would’ve had to sink a ton into to make it liveable. So she settled. And it’s fine. She doesn’t have to love everything about her place, right?

“Oh, that’s fucking brilliant,” she hears through the wall. Again. Not that particular phrase, but the woman’s voice shouting. She’s British. Allie’s texted her friend Becca saying she doesn’t need to watch television when she’s got drama playing out on the other side of her living room wall. 

She can hear a guy’s muffled voice, because apparently he doesn’t match his partner’s volume when she’s yelling at him, and then a door slams, and Allie sighs. Fucking figures she’d finally move into a nicer building and still have to deal with neighbours’ bullshit. There’s a lesson here, right? That people are what make any place crappy, or something like that. 

Whatever. She’s got a little work to do, just some data cleanup stuff she can do with the television on and a glass of wine and her laptop on her knees. An hour later, she hears them fighting again and rolls her eyes.

…

One Sunday morning, she hears the guy say, “Then why are you even with me?” and Allie almost holds her breath waiting for a response. There isn’t one. She sort of feels badly for him. 

(It’s rare of her to take the side of a dude, to be honest. It’s just that this woman sort of shits on him all the time, and Allie’s actually been wondering why he’s even with her?)

… 

She sees him coming in one evening with a beautiful Australian shepherd on a leash. She knew they had a dog, because even though it’s super quiet and well trained, it’s still a dog and she hears it sometimes. It doesn’t really bother her. She’s sort of wondered if she should get one of her own. She just waffles back and forth on the ethics of having a dog cooped up in a stupid condo all the time with no yard, you know? 

“Hey,” he says with a smile, and Allie...First of all, it’s weird that she’s never actually seen his face before. She worries she should’ve gone over to introduce herself when she moved in. “I’m Harry.” 

“Allie,” she says, and shakes his hand. The dog, sitting patiently and looking at her, just pants a little. “Who’s your friend?”

Harry laughs, which is...he’s hot. She isn’t going to be shy about thinking that. “This is Poe.”

“Poe,” she says with a smile. That’s a cute name. “Beautiful dog.”

“Thanks.” There’s a bit of a pause, and then Harry rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “Hey, sorry if you can hear…”

Oh god. He really doesn’t have to… She waves him off. “It’s okay,” she tells him, and finds she means it. She thinks it’s shitty he has to apologize for the fighting. She thinks it’s shitty that his partner talks to him the way she does. But that’s absolutely not her business. “Relationships are hard.”

He gives her this sort of kind, gentle smile and nods. “Yeah.”

Allie waits to see if he’s going to say more, then he doesn’t. “Well, I’m off to get a coffee. Ran out.”

“My nightmare.” She laughs, which makes him smile, and...Look, they’re not flirting, but he’s nice. And hot. Did she mention hot? “Try Commons Espresso if you haven’t already. It’s great.”

She hasn’t, but she’ll take the recommendation. 

“Okay,” she says, and then blinks up at him, and...Fuck. She’s flirting. “Nice to meet you, Harry.”

He absolutely looks her up and down as she’s walking past and he says, “You too, Allie.”

… 

The British woman lets the door close behind her when Allie is coming in one evening and it’s fuckign freezing out, and Allie says a sarcastic, “Thanks,” loud enough for the woman to hear. She gives a shitty look over her shoulder and then lets the elevator door close, too, and Allie just…

God, she does not like that woman. 

… 

She’s stepping out into the hall one day and Poe is bounding in her direction. Harry’s getting off the elevator and must’ve just dropped the leash - she thinks this is a thing he does pretty often, because she can hear Poe’s tags sometimes as the dog runs. Poe stops in front of her and nudges her hand to get some attention, and Allie laughs and reaches down to pet the dog. 

“Sorry,” Harry says, though he doesn’t sound too apologetic, probably because he’s realized he doesn’t need to be. “You look great.”

He says it so sincerely it sort of surprises her. God, how can he be so casual about complimenting her appearance when his partner is literally just inside? 

“Thanks.” She shouldn’t tuck her hair behind her ear that way. Fuck. “I have a date.”

His brow goes up, but she can’t read his expression, not really. “Good luck.”

She grins at him. “Don’t need luck with this shining personality.” 

Harry laughs - she likes making him do that - and says, “Of course,” like he actually means it. 

Poe’s tail hits her leg as she walks away. Allie hears him usher the dog into the apartment and definitely does not look back to see if he’s watching her go.

…

She hears the fight they have that breaks them up. 

Rather, she hears him say what sounds like, “I don’t wanna do this anymore,” and then a bunch of shouting from the other person, and then a door slams. God, that sound is almost typical at this point. 

She waits 40 minutes before she knocks on his door. She agonizes about it, wondering if she should even bother, or mind her own goddamn business. She just...Look, part of the reason she ended up buying this place is that she needed to leave her last apartment fast because she broke up with her boyfriend. She wishes someone had been there for her immediately after that fight, and she thinks she could be that for him, or at least offer. 

He looks exhausted when he opens the door, and then confused when he sees it’s her. Then, almost immediately, he seems almost embarrassed. 

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly, and he just takes a breath and nods, makes another apology. “No, it’s okay. I just...Wanted to check on you.”

Poe comes to the door, sees it’s her, and then sits down to Harry’s left. They’re like two peas in a pod. It’s irritatingly cute. 

“Thanks, Allie,” he says sincerely. 

She nods, and then… God, this is stupid, but she just wants to be helpful. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

He says something about her being a good person, and she closes her door behind her and really just feels glad he didn’t think that was weird. 

…

He knocks on her door on Saturday morning, when she’s listening to Shawn Mendes and drinking coffee in her sweats. He looks a little amused when she opens the door. Poe’s with him. She realizes she’s never actually seen him without the dog. 

“Morning,” he says with a grin, like he thinks she’s cute, or something. “I have a favour to ask.” 

Allie’s brow goes up. “Oh yeah?”

God, she needs to sound less flirtatious. Fucking hell. 

“Two options, really.” She nods, smiling, and gestures for him to continue. “You watch this guy for me for a while, or the two of us get outta here and hang out while Charlotte moves out.”

Oh god.

She needs to make that sad, scared look on his face go away. 

“Is this some bitter custody battle I’m getting roped into?” she asks. Harry lets out a laugh, and she pulls the door open and invites him in.

“Something like that,” he says, and shit. “He’s our dog, but he’s really my dog, you know?”

Allie nods, completely understanding. “He seems pretty loyal.”

Harry looks sort of proud of it, glances down at Poe, then says, “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but he loves me more.”

She laughs, wants to change before they go out, but also wants to know where they’re going before she commits to an outfit. 

“I can sort of tell,” she tells him, and Harry shakes his head, gets this cheeky grin on his lips. 

“No, I mean he loves me more than she did.”

She shouldn’t laugh at that. It’s dark and deprecating and it’s probably rude to laugh. But she can’t help it. 

“Well then.” Allie drains the last of her coffee, meets his eyes, and says, “No accounting for taste.” 

He looks really pleased that she’s obviously and very blatantly flirting with him, and then nods when she says she’s going to go change, for him to make himself at home. 

They end up spending the day in the park. He treats her to a delicious sandwich from a deli he tells her it’s a crime she hasn’t tried yet, and then a cup of coffee. He tells her about the breakup, and the relationship, and she tells him about her own situation. He makes an offhand comment about how Charlotte and Allie’s ex seem like they’d be perfect for each other. Allie remarks that he doesn’t seem that sad about it, and he just says it’s been a long time coming. 

And then he says, “There’re other women out there, you know?” and it sounds like a loaded statement. 

Allie should absolutely not let him hit on her when he’s been single less than a week, but she also likes it. So there’s that. 

“Mm. I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

Harry laughs and knocks her knee with his as Poe runs around on the grass and brings back the ball Harry’s been throwing from his place sitting next to her on this bench. 

“Aren’t you glad you moved in next to me and all my stupid drama?” he asks. 

Allie sips her coffee, tugs her scarf up a bit, mostly hoping it’ll hide her smile. 

But she still says, “Yeah, actually,” way too softly, so maybe she shouldn’t have tried to fool him.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Where have you been all my life?”   
> “Hiding from you.”

He remembers Allie Pressman as the snotty little girl who used to call him Harold because she thought it was funny, and stuck her tongue out at him during church and laughed when he got in trouble for doing it back. 

He remembers Allie Pressman as a fucking daredevil who broke her ankle when she jumped from the top of the jungle gym when she was in sixth grade because someone told her they didn’t think she’d do it. He was the someone. But still. 

He remembers Allie Pressman as the girl who lost a little of the light in her eyes when she got to high school, who’d hold her books to her chest until you challenged her to something and she’d tilt her chin up and take it on headfirst. 

He remembers Allie Pressman as the only girl who’s ever shot him down, and that was just at prom when he asked her if she wanted to dance and she looked at him like he’d lost his fucking mind. 

Allie Pressman showing up to the same school he’s at, her little blazer on with her jeans and Doc Martens…

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and yeah, it probably sounds fucking insulting, but like, she’s younger than he is. There’s no way she could be starting law school at the same time he is.

She gives him a smile he doesn’t want to think is hot, but here they are. 

“Power of loading my schedule and like, not having summers ever.”

Yeah, that sounds fucking insane to him. 

Harry rolls his eyes and walks away. Mostly because he knows for a fact that his biggest competition just showed up, and he’s not entirely happy about it. 

…

She gets pissy when he sees her next at the afterparty of the school sanctioned mixer. It’s at this bar he knows because he did his undergrad here, too, unlike her. Allie’s there with a glass of whiskey in her hand, this black dress that looks better on her than it should, considering how plain it is. She’s talking to Jacob, who’s Harry’s friend, and he just…

“Are you even 21?” he asks, coming over and inserting himself into the conversation as she laughs at something Jacob says. 

She gives him a shitty look and says, “You know exactly how old I am, Harry.” 

He does. He remembers her birthday. It’s a week before his. 

Jacob asks him what the history is. Harry thinks what the question actually is, is if he and Allie ever hooked up. He follows Jacob’s line of sight and glances over his shoulder at her. 

He’s not gonna lie and say they did. For some reason, he doesn’t like the idea of Jacob…

No, he’s being a fucking idiot. 

“No. Small town drama, you know?”

Jacob smiles knowingly and Harry takes his eyes off Allie, which is harder than he wants to admit, okay? 

…

She’s walking across campus under an umbrella and Harry sees the guy bump into her as he runs past, sends her coffee flying. Harry honestly laughs when he sees her turn and yell at the guy, gesturing with her hand wildly. He can’t hear what she’s saying, but he can imagine it’s not too pleasant. 

He considers replacing her coffee - he’s literally standing inside the coffee shop - but that seems like something he’s really not obligated to do. 

He definitely also doesn’t need to take a pointed sip of his drink as he sits down two seats over from her in their lecture hall. She won’t know he witnessed what he did, but he gets a stupid sense of satisfaction from it anyway. 

Halfway through the class, she reaches over and takes the cup, drains the rest of it and sets the empty cup on the floor by her bag. Harry’s just watching her and she’s grinning like she’s beaten him at some game.

He leaves without talking to her, because he really feels like she’s got his number - has since they were literal children - and he doesn’t feel like getting into it with her today. Doesn’t have it in him. 

…

The next class they have together, she brings him a full coffee, says, “Thanks for the drink,” as she sets it in front of him, and Harry almost doesn’t want to drink it. Like a protest. It just smells really good. And he wants it. That’s the only reason he drinks it. Honestly.

…

Maybe he should get over it and just start being decent to her. This is a thing he starts thinking when he realizes he can’t even name why he’s bothered that she’s here. She deserves it as much as he does, apparently. Worked her ass off just like he did to get accepted to this school. He can’t hold that against her.

But then she debates him in one of their study groups, and flat out says, “You’re just wrong, Harry,” and he really, really doesn’t like that. 

He studies way too hard and tries to make sure she never gets to do that shit to him again. 

…

There’s a party at the end of the semester. Allie wears another dress she looks incredible in, pins her hair back in these sparkly little clips above her ears. He smiles to himself when he sees she still wears that little star necklace she used to. It’s not a permanent fixture like it was years ago, but he likes to see it. 

Her dress is dark blue, and his tie matches, and he sees her glass is empty so he brings her a refill when he goes to say hello, figuring it’d be rude not to. 

She smiles up at him, turns a little, and the light catches her eyes just so. She looks fucking beautiful. It’s not new. It’s another annoying fact about her. 

“We match,” he tells her, hand in his pocket. She lets out a little laugh, looks like maybe she actually likes it. 

“Mm.” She sips her drink, tips her chin up like she used to at the first glimmer of a challenge. “Where’ve you been all my life?”

Harry chuckles, says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, “Hiding from you.”

He thinks she might laugh, but what she does instead is rub her lips together, set her hand on his chest and lean in, look at him from under her lashes. 

What the fuck?

She leans up a little so she can say into his ear, “I always kinda suspected you just wanted me to chase you.” 

He doesn’t know what the hell to say to that. Like, what the hell is he supposed to say to that? 

“That’s not what I said.” 

He ends up following her as she turns to walk away. Which is, he thinks, what she wanted. 

She presses her shoulders back against the wall in the hallway of this house they’re in, which is enticing, and so when he stands in front of her and she smiles up at him…

“Who’s chasing who?” she asks, smug, and he should find that unattractive, but definitely doesn’t. No, he’s not finding anything about her unattractive right now. Hardly ever does. He’s sort of messed up about all this. 

“What are you doing?” He smiles down at her, then steps forward, presses his hand against the wall over her shoulder. 

“Whatever I want,” she tells him. It makes him laugh a little. 

“Not surprising at all.”

Allie’s hand slides up his chest until her arm’s draping over his shoulder, and then she tells him, softly, “You should just be happy what I want is you.”

You know what? That’s a good point. 

He says, “You wln,” and she says, “I always do,” and he wants to argue that but it doesn’t feel like the right time to do so.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Somehow, I always seem to end up here. With you.”

He has a one night stand with her when all he knows is her first name and that she looks pretty fucking good in these ridiculous overalls with her little black top underneath. There’s a party, and alcohol, and he keeps checking she’s sure and she keeps laughing and saying yes. Keeps saying it until it’s breathy and her hands are in his hair, and…

“Fuck,” she says in the morning, just enough panic in her voice to make him scared. “Fuck.” 

“Are you okay?” he asks, because he’s not an asshole, and she’s throwing back the covers and getting out of his bed, and yeah, he looks, because she doesn’t have any clothes on. He rubs his eye with his fingertips as she spins around and looks at him. She looks distracted by him, too. He likes that. 

“I have a fucking boyfriend,” she tells him, and it almost sounds accusatory, like it’s something he was supposed to know even though they just met last night, or whatever. 

And honestly, it sounds like her problem. 

He says, “Okay,” and flops back against his pillows, and it makes her laugh, which is unexpected, but he’s into it. 

She gets dressed, says goodbye without touching him again, and look, it’s not like he’s never done this before, okay? He goes about his day just like he normally would, and frankly, ignores the text he gets from his own ex-girlfriend asking if he went home with that girl last night. 

…

Calling it a one night stand is a little bit of a lie, really, because a week later she’s knocking on his door and pushing him against the wall when he lets her in. He asks her what the deal is with her boyfriend, and she asks, “Do you actually care?” and he decides he really doesn’t. He’s getting what he wants. Who’s he to have any kind of feelings about her situation?

She stays the night again. He wonders if she’s done this kind of thing before. He thinks she hasn’t, or she wouldn’t be sleeping next to him. But he likes the way she looks in the morning. Likes the way she looks like she wants him again. Likes the way she says, “I should go,” but is also looking at his mouth and sliding her hand down his body.

…

He sees her on campus months later walking with some dude who...Harry’s not being an asshole deliberately, but the guy’s not as attractive as he is. He just...it’s a fact, okay? 

She locks eyes with him, gives him way to hot a look considering she’s literally with someone else, and Harry tries not to react because he doesn’t feel like getting into a fight with this random guy for hitting on his girl, or whatever. 

…

She’s at a beach party he goes to in the summer. She’s wearing this bikini that makes him a little weak, and a Yale ballcap with her hair all wavy over her shoulders, and he sort of wants to comment that this is what dreams are made of, but as he’s approaching, the guy walks up to her, hooks an arm around her waist and presses a kiss right on her lips in front of everyone.

She comes to sit next to him later, by the fire, crosses her legs and sets her beer between her thighs and looks so fucking good he just watches her a minute. 

“You know, I wanna ask for your number, but that just creates all this temptation to keep doing this.”

Harry grins, looks into her eyes and resists the temptation to play with the strings of her bikini at her hip. “Oh yeah? What’s this, exactly.”

She laughs, which he likes. “Come with someone else and leave with you?”

He takes a sip of his drink and looks her up and down. Blatantly. He wants her to see it. 

“Let’s be honest. You come with me, too.”

She barks out a laugh and shoves at his shoulder, says, “You’re awful,” and yeah, he’s got a witty reply to that, too. He just leans over and says this one into her ear, hears the breath she lets out, feels her hand brush his as their palms are pressing into the sand behind them. 

Her eyes meet his when he pulls away, and she says, “Can we go?” and Harry knows he should say no, but that’s not what happens. 

…

They meet for a drink when there’s a brand new diamond ring on her finger and he’s seeing someone and they both know exactly how this is going to go, but it doesn’t seem to matter. 

It’s not like they don’t do this regularly anyway. Last month when she pulled him into her apartment, her hand was bare. He knows that much. And he’d told her about his girlfriend and she’d just nodded when her lips were against his neck, so. 

Honestly, he doesn't know how she doesn’t feel bad about this. He does, and he’s not committed to marry someone. 

He asks her about it when they’re in his bed and she’s playing with his hair. 

She shrugs. “Getting married feels like the thing I’m supposed to do. Doing this with you is the thing I want to do.” 

He lets out a breath, looks over at her. “It can’t be that simple.”

She shrugs, and he knows he’s right. That it’s not that simple. 

…

She shows him a picture of herself in her wedding dress. His heart beats too hard at the sight of it, the delicate lace against her skin, her hair swept over her shoulder. Fuck. 

“What if he finds out?” he asks, his hand skimming up under her shirt. It makes her breath catch when his thumb brushes against this spot he’s known about for years now. 

“What if she does?”

He barely stops kissing her neck as he says, “We broke up,” and Allie freezes, pushes him away so she can look at his face. He shrugs a shoulder and she gives him this sad little smile, puts both her hands on his face and kisses him softer than she ever has. 

Harry presses her back against the sofa because he doesn’t want to think about that too hard. What it means. What he might want it to mean. 

…

He isn’t sure, really, how to tell her he’s moving out of state. In the end, he avoids the conversation entirely, and then when she invites herself over and he’s not strong enough to say no, his house is half packed into boxes and she looks like she’s going to cry. 

“You’re leaving,” she says, and it isn’t a question, and Harry just nods as he pours her a drink. He’s having a hard time looking at her, which is sort of not at all his normal experience. “Where? When?”

“DC. Couple weeks.” He turns, sees the sad look on her face and presses the glass into her hand when he’s standing right in front of her. 

She hesitates, chews her bottom lip and looks over again at the stack of boxes in his living room. 

“Were you going to tell me?” 

He sighs, is surprised that he doesn’t avoid her eyes now. Honestly, he waffled back and forth on letting her know. He only now feels like it would’ve been kind of awful not to. 

“Does it make a difference?” he asks anyway, because…

Because suddenly it feels like her answer is really fucking important.

Allie blinks. He thinks there’re tears in her eyes, and he hates that. Then she just nods gently, and he doesn’t honestly even know what that means. They’re not together, have never been together. They just do this regularly enough to know each other pretty well. To be important to each other. But she’s married to someone else and Harry…

Harry needs to get over the idea of them at some point. Maybe moving away will help him with that. Not that that’s why he’s doing it.

“Somehow I always seem to end up here,” she whispers, looks down, swirls the ice in her glass. He looks, too, at her hand. Her right hand, the one without a ring, and her dark red nail polish he knows’ll look incredible against his skin when she’s touching him after this. When they undress each other and reset things, stop talking about feelings. She looks back up at him, a little smile on her lips. “With you.”

He grins, because he thinks if he doesn’t steer this away from this serious shit, they’re going to do something stupid, like fall in love. 

“What you want, right?”

She laughs, this bright, gorgeous sound that echoes through his half empty house. 

Before she leaves, when she’s getting dressed and wearing just her bra and jeans, she stops, drops her shirt on the bed and moves to sit down next to him. She looks him dead in the eye and then sets her hand on his side. 

“Don’t move,” she says, dead serious, and Harry lets out a breath, wishes she wasn’t making this so fucking hard. “What if you don’t move?”

He shakes his head. “I already gave notice and accepted the offer, Allie. I’ve bought a house.” She looks mad, like she thinks he should’ve consulted her, or something. Which is a little fucked up, because like...God, they don’t owe each other anything. She’s not his wife. 

She leans closer, reaches up and moves her thumb along his bottom lip. He parts his lips for her on instinct alone, and fuck, he wishes he never wanted her this bad. 

“I could give you a reason to stay,” she says, and he thinks she’s joking. She sounds like she’s joking. 

It’s late and there’s someone waiting on her to get home. She’s gotta be joking. 

And honestly…

“You’ve had lots of opportunities to do that,” he tells her, and he shouldn’t, and he feels badly, and he’s surprised as hell that she doesn’t pull her hand away immediately and leave. 

What she does instead is lean closer, slide her hand around to the back of his head and kiss him, and...God, he knows this is always a bad idea, and that he shouldn’t feel this fucking good about her reaction to the thing he’s said. It’s not gonna change anything for them. 

She still leaves. She still looks sad but doesn’t say anything else about him moving. They don’t say they’ll see each other soon, but that’s not a thing they’ve ever actually done. 

…

His hotel room is stark and modern and he spins his phone in his hand at least 80 times before he says, “For fuck’s sake,” out loud to himself and just gives in and calls her. He’s fooling himself thinking he doesn’t want to. 

She answers, “Well, well,” and sounds fucking happy, and he catches sight of his smile in the mirror at just the sound of her voice. God, he’s a fool for her. 

“We don’t talk for a year and this is how you greet me?” She laughs in his ear, which is exactly what he wanted. “I’m in town, if you wanna grab a drink.”

“A drink?” she asks, all skeptical, like she knows that’s not what he’s really asking. And she’s right. It’s not, really. There’s a brief silence where he’s trying to figure out what to say, and then she just… “Come to mine.”

Harry freezes, his fingers flexing against his phone, because…

“What?” 

He sounds a little breathless. He doesn’t feel bad about it. 

“Yeah,” she says, sounding a little more confident than he’d expect. “See my new one bedroom in all its glory.” 

Harry rubs his fingers against his jaw, tries not to think too far into the future - which is something he’s got lots of practice with, with her.   
“All right,” he says, and Allie lets out this little laugh he’s always loved. “What’s the address?”


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m gonna marry you one day.”

He’s a model turned influencer and all round thirst trap and Allie is definitely, certainly not interested. 

She meets him once at a party in Vegas and he looks her up and down in a way that makes her roll her eyes and turn away from him. Then he leans on the bar next to her and says, “I’m Harry,” like he thinks that means something and it’s not a total dick move because everyone with a phone knows who he is.

“I’m not interested,” she replies, and he grins like he likes it. Allie ends up smiling, which is a thing she regrets. When he lifts his drink to his lips, he’s still looking at her like he knows something she doesn’t. 

He says, “We’ll see,” as she’s walking away, and she shoots him a disgusted look over her shoulder, because gross.

…

He starts commenting on her Instagram posts, and it’s honestly truly annoying that he’s even found her. It obviously wasn’t hard. And she’s not a celebrity, or anything, but she’s got a bit of a following because she’s a stylist and some of her most famous clients tag her in stuff. 

This profile comes out on this website, and Apartment Therapy comes to do a house tour of her place in the Village. 

Harry DMs her about one of the art pieces on her wall, asks if she’d consider doing some design work for him. 

She thanks any deity she can think of that she’s in a good enough financial position to turn him down. 

…

She doesn’t so much agree to go for a drink with him as they’re out with people and apparently he and Becca are friends, or something, and he’s there and actually acting more chill than Allie’s ever seen him. 

When her glass is empty, he says, “Another?” and Allie nods and tries not to think his smile is handsome. 

Fuck. It’s just that...Look, he’s a model. He’s a literal model. Was, anyway. Him being handsome is just an undeniable fact. And that cut of jeans looks really good on him. 

His arm brushes hers as she asks Becca a question about how long she’s in town, and Allie doesn’t move and knows she should. 

…

He’s high at the Teen Choice Awards. She can tell. She hasn’t seen him since that night in New York, but sometimes when he DMs her now, she replies. And he asked her for her number and she said no, and he said one day she’d give it to him. Two weeks later, there were photos of him leaving Nobu with this model Allie knows is a fucking horrendous person. They were holding hands and getting into a car. 

“Allie!” he says, his voice too loud, just a little too sharp even for a party. He puts an arm around her and she hugs him back, because she’s just...She’s gotten over not liking him at all. 

She thinks, really, part of the thing is, she keeps getting these little glimpses that he’s different, you know? And she likes those. She isn’t the biggest fan of this.

“Hey. You’re having a good time.”

He grins at her. She looks at his hair. It looks good. Almost perfect. She thinks his outfit is basic and bad. She wants to tell him to let her style him. 

“It’s a party, Allie.” He says her name too much. It’s weird. Then he steps closer, looks down at her and honestly, it’s sort of hot that he isn’t touching her. Would be hotter if he wasn’t so obviously on something. “We could have a good time together.” 

She scoffs, shakes her head and, despite knowing better, smiles up at him. “Keep dreaming, Harry.” 

He reaches for her hand, then brings it up to press against his heart. “I do, you know.” She rolls her eyes, but thinks...No. No, this isn’t flattering. “Dream girl, right here.”

She presses her tongue against the back of her teeth and he grins down at her. She pushes against his chest and tells him to have a good night. 

Weirdly, she thinks she knows him well enough to know he definitely watches her leave. 

…

He gets a three episode arc on a popular show that makes everyone cry every week. When he posts TikToks with the key cast members, Allie finds herself laughing and almost wishing she could text him. Just to say congratulations. 

She DMs him instead, thinks this is the first time she’s ever reached out to him first. He sends back the black heart. She doesn’t know why that makes her feel so fucking weird. 

… 

She dresses Zendaya for the Met Ball, knows she’s got massive shoes to fill and that this is another make or break moment. 

She, herself, is dressed in all black and gets Zendaya in the car and out of the car and fixes the dress and the headpiece and the jewelry, and then the flashes are going off and Allie feels like she can breathe because her work is done. When she turns around, Harry’s standing there in an all black suit with gold dust in his hair and a delicate tie pin, and…

He looks so fucking good Allie hates herself for staring like everyone else. 

He leans down to kiss her cheek, which is...There’re cameras pointed at them and flashes going off and god, this is going to be such a fucking thing, isn’t it? 

“Sorry,” he says, and she thinks it’s for the attention, but then he reaches up with his thumb and wipes gold dust off her nose as he smiles at her. 

“You’re gonna be late.”

He says, “They’ll wait,” with a confidence she finds hotter than she should. 

He winks, then slips a hand into his pocket and walks towards the carpet and the stairs. 

Allie watches him for as long as it takes to count to 10 and then leaves. 

…

“You look great,” someone says behind her, almost sounds surprised, and when she turns around and he’s standing there, she’s a little flattered. 

She’s not usually the one in the fancy dresses, you know? She’s trying to think if he’s ever seen her in anything other than whatever pants she threw on.

“Thanks,” she says, because Becca made her promise to get better at accepting compliments. 

She’s at this gala for a charity she volunteers with. She’s surprised he’s here. When she asks him about it, he just looks a little bashful and says, “I just...made a couple donations.”

She thinks those were not small donations. 

“Are you trying to keep me on my toes, or something?” she asks, and he laughs, smiles at her. “You keep popping up where I least expect you.”

He hums, reaches out and pushes a lock of hair off her shoulder. “I’d be pretty happy to see you more often.” 

She thinks they’ve been doing this for like, 18 months or something. She can’t really remember why she was so insistent on ignoring him. 

“Maybe you’ve earned my number,” she says, and then tries not to smile too widely at the way his eyes light up. 

“Yeah?”

She shrugs, grabs her glass of champagne off the bar. She says, “Maybe,” and brushes against him as she walks away. 

She DMs it to him as she’s leaving at the end of the night. It only halfway feels like a mistake. 

…

It’s Paris, and Fashion Week, and Harry in a wool Burberry coat that hasn’t even been on a runway yet, and she knew he’d be here but didn’t tell him she would be. No, she doesn’t know why she kept that to herself. 

It’s raining and she’s, frankly, worried about her outfit, this crepe-y top with her pants and these Louboutin heels she treated herself to just for this trip. 

She’s holding her umbrella as he walks towards her outside this venue. 

She never would’ve paired that jacket with those boots. She tells him that instead of saying hello, and he laughs, leans in to kiss her cheek like he’s started doing. Something about Harry in Paris is just almost too much to handle. He smells differently. His hair’s a bit damp. He looks so fucking good she feels like she’s making it up.

“I’m working,” she tells him after he’s asked her to come for a drink at his hotel after the show. 

Honestly, he’s never been so direct. He’s never invited her to his hotel before. God, they’ve never even actually been alone together. 

“I respect the hustle,” he says, though she can tell he’s disappointed by her no. She sort of likes that, too. She thinks he does mean it. “I leave in two days, though.”

She lets out a laugh and they move towards the steps. “Yeah? Is there an expiration date on your very clear adoration for me?”

Harry stops, and she regrets her words immediately. She meant it to be teasing. It’s just supposed to be a joke. It’s this thing they do. 

She turns, and he’s on the step two lower than hers, just looking at her like she’s hit on something a little too close to home. 

“No,” he says, which is definitely not what she was expecting. Then that grin is back, the one she sees directed at her regularly, but hardly ever anywhere else. “No, I’m gonna marry you one day.”

Allie lets out an obnoxious and probably very unflattering laugh, and turns to continue inside. It’s just that Harry reaches for her wrist and pulls, and she sort of crashes against his chest, and then his hands are moving up onto her face and they’re level with how they’re standing on the steps. So when he kisses her, it feels so natural and so good and so…

Allie curls her fists into the lapels of this expensive ass coat he’s wearing and lets out a little sound, then feels him smiling against her lips.

When he pulls away, she notices the cameras, knows there’re now gonna be photos everywhere of them and him in that coat with those stupid boots and her umbrella over them and she distantly thinks she’s really happy she knows she looks as good as she does. 

She says, “Let’s skip the drink, but keep the hotel.” 

Harry breathes a laugh like he wasn’t expecting that, but nods, and then they walk into the venue side by side. 

She feels the need to make something very clear, though. 

“I’m not gonna marry you.”

Harry’s lips twist and he sets his hand on his back as navigate through the crowd, and he says, “We’ll see,” and she thinks he really likes the way she looks at him over her shoulder.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What, you’ve never thought about us?”

He meets Allie on a blind double date. Which isn’t as messed up as it sounds, he swears. See, it’s only blind for them. Maybe it’s weird to call it a blind date, then. Whatever. She’s dating his girlfriend’s brother. And dating probably isn’t accurate, either. He’s been with Kelly for years, and Kevin’s now been with Allie for six months. It’s the longest relationship the guy’s ever had, despite Kevin being two years older than him and Kelly.

Anyway, she and Kevin show up at this trattoria Harry chose. She looks pretty and nervous, and he knew what she looked like because Kelly showed him pictures on Instagram. God, she’s been showing him pictures of this girl for like, three months. Since the first one popped up on Kevin’s page and everyone started losing their shit about how it must actually be serious. 

Kevin sits across from him, and Harry chooses the wine for the table, and Kelly has no chill at all and is way too excited to like, interrogate this poor woman. 

Harry learns that Allie works in strategy for this startup that’s not really a startup by definition but has just started to scale. Harry’s pretty familiar with their trajectory, because his financial advisor keeps them on his radar. He mentions something about one of the pivots the company just made, and Allie gets this little look on her face and tries to suppress a smile, and Kevin just looks at her like he’s proud of her, or something. 

She says, “That was all me,” which is not at all how Harry’d expected her to take credit for it, but there’s something he likes a lot about this honestly adorable woman who seems pretty humble owning her big success. 

When he and Kelly are getting into bed in the evening, she asks, “What’d you think?” and he’s honest when he says Allie seems great and she and Kevin seem happy together. 

…

The holidays are fucking awkward, because the holidays are always fucking awkward. Only he and Kelly know about their parents’ affair, and they both dread going home for this occasion or any other one. They’ve been able to get out of it because of Kelly’s schedule at the clinic, but this is her off year and they kind of just have to suck it up and deal with it, don’t they? 

Christmas Eve, Harry walks into the kitchen of Kelly’s house to open another bottle of champagne, and finds Allie there eating leftover Chinese straight from the container. They’d ordered in, as is the Aldrich Christmas Eve tradition, but Kevin and Allie had been late arriving from the city. 

She looks a little embarrassed at being caught, covers her mouth with her hand as she looks at him. He just smiles, lifts a brow, and walks past her to get to the wine fridge. 

“We didn’t stop for food. I’m starving and drunk,” she says, and then laughs, and Harry can’t help laughing with her. “I know better than to drink on an empty stomach, but…”

Harry wonders if she’s going to say it. She just looks up at him and he knows she won’t. 

“Gary’s persuasive,” he says, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, honestly, but whatever. At some point, he should probably let it go. Allie nods, anyway, and then continues eating fried rice. “Good drive?”

She shrugs. “It was fine. I keep thinking about work.”

Harry breathes a laugh, pops the cork on the champagne and starts pouring. “Same. I took some days while Kelly’s off, and I know it’s gonna come back to bite me in the ass.” Allie smiles too brightly, pulls her phone from her back pocket and shows him her Slack notifications on her homescreen. She has to scroll three times to get to the end. Fuck. He gives her a look. “On Christmas Eve?”

She shrugs. “I’m kind of the glue that holds everything together.” Her phone lights up on the counter again and Harry just...He thinks she likes it. Being the one people need. “Kevin hates it.”

Harry scoffs, wonders how shitty he can be about the guy in this house, to this woman. 

“I mean, Kevin wouldn’t get it,” he says, figuring it’s sort of delicate. It’s not that Kevin’s useless or doesn’t have a good job. He does. He works in HR for a Fortune 500, but his culture is strictly 9-5 with sundown hours on communications and… It’s just different. “But you should definitely turn off notifications.” 

He grins, and she laughs, and she puts the container back in the fridge and picks up her glass and offers to carry the bottle back to the living room while he carries glasses. Kevin makes a big thing of her returning, and Harry tries to ignore how pretty she looks when she sits down on the floor near the fireplace and the colouring looks good on her. 

He fails. 

...

One of Kelly’s patients goes into labour right literally as they’re walking towards Kevin’s place to meet him and Allie for board game night. Which is a thing he hates but does once a month anyway, because Kevin and Kelly are nerds and he and Allie always lose but try to cheat and conspire and play spoiler. Last time, they played Catan and he and Allie hoarded shit and wouldn’t trade with Kevin and helped Kelly win because Kevin was being kind of a dick. 

He wants to bail when Kelly has to leave, but she insists he should go because it’d be rude to cancel last minute, so he shows up and feels awkward as fuck as he explains that Kelly’s not coming. Kevin pours him a beer and Allie tells him they now have way too much charcuterie so he better eat both his and Kelly’s shares. 

He convinces them to play poker instead of some shitty board game and Allie is way too excited, says she and her best friend went through a period in high school where they learned to play and she always used to beat him. Harry doesn’t know how, because she’s got the worst poker face he’s ever seen. 

“Care to make things interesting?” he asks, and Allie looks right at him across the table, narrows her eyes. 

“I’ve only ever played for pennies,” Kevin chimes in. Harry barely spares him a glance. 

“$100 a hand?” Harry suggests as he shuffles and Allie laughs. 

“No thanks, rich boy. Some of us have to make rent.” 

It makes him laugh, and she decides they should just play for pistachios, and Harry has fun anyway, so that’s kind of something. 

Kevin packs it in before things are cleared up and Harry’s left, which feels rude as fuck, but Harry doesn’t comment. He just says goodnight and asks Allie if she wants a hand as Kevin closes the bedroom door behind him. 

They’re mostly quiet as they move dishes to the kitchen, but Harry thinks he can tell she’s...embarrassed or something. Which he sort of gets, though he thinks the one who should be embarrassed is Kevin. 

“Early morning, or something?” he asks, and he only realizes maybe it’s shitty is because of the look she cuts him. 

She seems to think about her response, then leans her hip against the counter and says, “Or someone whose mother babied him and refuses to break the habit of being looked after.”

Oh. Oh shit. 

Harry crosses his arms and raises his brow. “Wanna tell me how you really feel?”

She lets out a breath, sinks her hand into her hair at the top of her head. Which is...She looks good. He’s allowed to notice. 

“Sorry. I’m...It’s a whole thing.” Right. So they’ve talked about it before and Kevin’s pulled this anyway. “Do you have this issue with Kelly?” 

Harry tilts his head. He thinks it’s different, because gender roles, or whatever. Kelly’s super tidy, but also doesn’t let him get away with leaving her to do everything on her own. Not that he tries. 

Jesus, it only dawns on him now that this situation is even more fucked because Allie doesn’t even live here. 

“No,” he answers honestly. “Also, I was babied, too, but I don’t expect to be waited on.”

She definitely hears what he’s actually saying. Which is that he agrees she shouldn’t have to put up with this shit. She gives him a little smile, blinks up at him and says, “Then you’re a unicorn. Because the men I date just want a replacement mommy.”

He should laugh at her joke. He should laugh at her joke and definitely not say what he does say. 

Which is, “Then you’ve obviously never dated anyone like me.” 

Allie’s eyes narrow like she’s wondering if he’s really doing what she thinks he’s doing. He doesn’t have an answer for that, because he honestly doesn’t fucking know what he’s playing at here. 

So he just lets out a little chuckle, asks if she needs help with anything else, and then says he’s gonna take off when she tells him she’s got the rest. 

He walks home in the cold and knows he’s gotta be more careful. 

…

They end up dancing together at Kelly and Kevin’s cousin’s wedding in May. Allie looks beautiful in her pink dress, and this is the kind of occasion where it’s safe to tell her so. She has one hand resting on his upper back and the other tucked into his when she looks up at him and thanks him for the compliment. 

“It’s weird I’ve never seen you in a suit, since you probably wear one every day,” she says, and he feels her thumb slip up under the collar of his jacket at the base of his neck. Which is strikingly intimate and he wants to be surprised by her boldness, but he isn’t, really. 

“Yeah,” he says, then grins at her. “Wasn’t sure you could handle it.”

She lets out a laugh and shakes her head, and Harry just smiles and keeps leading her around the dancefloor using steps he learned when he was a teenager. 

…

Kelly doesn’t cheat on him. She’s adamant about that and he believes her because they stopped lying to each other when they were like, 18.

She’s crying when she tells him she thinks she’s falling in love with one of the nurses at work, and Harry just…

Honestly, he feels numb. 

He’s not mad at her - how the fuck could he be mad at her? - and he isn’t bothered that they’re breaking up. He’s mostly just scared to be alone again. Because when they broke up for a few years in college, he had some pretty terrible habits to deal with his loneliness, and he doesn’t want to do that again. 

Allie texts him that she’s so sorry, and to let her know if he needs anything. 

Kelly moves out of their place. The place they got together when they moved in with each other. He doesn’t know if he wants to stay here, and there’s a whole bunch of shit happening with a friend of his who’s a lawyer, so they can figure out how he can buy Kelly out of her part of the place. 

It feels weird to be here with all her shit gone. Feels less like his home and more like a hotel, or something. The mantel is clear now. It was previously covered with all Kelly’s little decor pieces and some pictures. He’s obviously not going to keep pictures of them in this place now. 

He sends Allie a picture - knows she’ll know what the mantel used to look like - and asks what he should put there now. 

She replies ‘This is the saddest fucking message I’ve ever gotten.’ and then sends him a bunch of Pinterest links ranging from nice, to cluttered, to outrageous and clearly joking. He considers trying to use one of them as an example, but just hires a decorator instead. Allie sends back a gif that makes him laugh when he tells her.

…

Kevin invites him over to watch the Stanley Cup finals, and Harry goes even though he doesn’t really care about sports and definitely doesn’t give a single fuck about hockey. He thinks he goes because he thinks he might get to see Allie. Which sort of fucks him up, honestly. 

“Nah. We broke up.”

Harry’s head turns too fast when Kevin says that. Maybe because it’s so casual. (That’s definitely not why.)

“What?”

Kevin shrugs. “I think we were just comfortable and going through the motions. She said something about Kelly inspiring her to not settle. Which felt like an insult.”

Harry wants to roll his eyes. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Allie saying she doesn’t want to settle. 

He texts her when he leaves Kevin’s between the second and third periods of the game. Says he just heard the news. 

She sends back a Spotify link to Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, that Dylan song Harry remembers his dad playing when he was younger. He doesn’t know what that means, but he listens to the song on his way home, anyway.

…

Allie brings a six pack of canned wine to the park when they meet up, and Harry sort of thought they’d just sit and chat, but she looks cute as fuck and happy to see him and then unpacks the drinks and literal Cracker Jack because she saw it at the bodega and thought it’d be funny to bring it. She also has a little container of cut fruit and two fancy looking cupcakes. 

“I literally brought nothing,” he says, and she cracks a can open for herself and sets another next to him. 

She smiles. “You can get it next time.”

Right. Next time. 

Anyway, she doesn’t feel badly for breaking up with Kevin, and she says she’d wanted to for a while and just waffled back and forth because there wasn’t really anything wrong, you know? Harry knows. He’s been there. 

“I hope this doesn’t sound awful, but hearing about you and Kelly - and Kelly specifically - just like, gave me permission to want more.” 

Harry nods. He’s not bothered. He thinks she’s right. He thinks she’s braver than he is. 

…

He leans in to kiss her and she leans away, looks at him through her lashes like she’s not sure what he’s doing. So that could be embarrassing, right? Except there’s this little, tiny smile on her lips and she won’t break eye contact, and Harry lets out a breath and ducks his head a little.

They’ve made their ‘games night’ bi-weekly, and sometimes weekly, and it’s now less of a games night and now more of a time to do whatever they want. 

What Harry wants this time, when they’re on his balcony and drinking this iced tea she promised he’d like, is to kiss her. 

“Harry,” she says all quietly, so he looks back at her again. “Is this a good idea?”

He answers, “Yes,” too quickly. It makes her laugh, and he thinks he’s fucking blushing, or something, which is stupid. He watches her a second, and her hair’s blowing around a bit, so he reaches over and pushes it behind her ear. She lets him do that. Watches, even. “What, you’ve never thought about us?”

She says, “I have,” in this soft voice he likes too much. 

“Yeah?”

She nods, says, “For too long,” and he thinks he knows what that means. She was thinking about it when she was with Kevin, just like he was thinking about it while he was with Kelly. 

“So,” he draws out. “Why aren’t we kissing?” 

He asks it with genuine curiosity, but also to make her laugh again, which she does. They both turn so their shoulders are square. Allie touches him first, puts her hand on his waist. It’s not like they’ve never touched before. They hug every time they greet each other or say goodbye. He’s thrown his arm around her before, and two weeks ago, when they were sunbathing because that’s what she wanted to do, he traced his fingertips over a scar on her back and asked her what it was from. 

“I guess I don’t really have a good reason.” She’s smiling, and Harry’s smiling back at her, and he thinks maybe he’s never wanted someone the way he wants her. “Why don’t you try again? See what happens.”

He tips his head back, laughing, and then Allie’s other hand moves to the back of his neck and he’s holding her hips when she’s definitely the one kissing him first.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Why should we date?”   
> “Because we’re attracted to each other.”

She’s just finished telling him about what a great day she had at work, and is currently watching him just look at her. His elbow’s leaning on the back of his sofa, his cheek resting on his fist and his head a little tilted, this tiny smile on his lips, and…

“We should date.” 

Allie can’t help that she lets out a laugh. That is just not at all what she expected so it catches her off guard. His smile just grows, and Allie just looks at him and wonders where the fuck he’s getting that idea. 

“Stop,” she says, and rolls her eyes, and Harry breathes a laugh and lets his hand drop as he turns so he’s a little closer to her. Allie feels the need to bring them back to their usual territory. She moves, watches his eyes track her, watches how easily he moves with her as she slings her leg over him and straddles his lap. “Why’s that?”

“Hm?”

Okay, mission accomplished, so she should’ve left that alone. 

“Why should we date?”

His hands skim up her thighs and he says, “Because we’re attracted to each other.”

That’s a shitty answer. 

Her hands move to his chest, a thing he really loves, particularly when he’s wearing one of these fancy button downs of his. And she just. She thinks if she moves the right way, lowers her voice a little and lets him know exactly what she wants from him, he might drop this conversation. 

He’s the guy who she sleeps with, with some regularity. He’s the finance bro she met when she was out one night celebrating winning a case, and who was so good in bed she asked him for his number before she left his fancy apartment. He’s the guy who, for the last six weeks or whatever, has been making her feel really fucking good once or twice a week, and who keeps mixing her elaborate drinks. Until tonight, when she’d said she sort of preferred to just have some tea and he made her this cinnamon rooibos that’s perfect for the season. He’s the guy whose hands feel good on her skin under the dress she wore to work. 

He’s not the guy who talks about dating. 

“Being attracted to each other is why we should do what we’re already doing,” she tells him, and he grins at her, brings one hand up to push her hair back like he likes to do. “So why should we date?”

Okay, if she wants to drop the subject, she should probably stop bringing it up. 

“Because I like you.”

Despite the generally pleasant feeling that brings up within her, she just shifts her hips forward the way he likes, loves the low groan he lets out as he tips his head back. 

“You like that,” she says, proving her point. Her hands move to his face, thumb teasing at the edge of his mouth. “This.” 

“I like this, too,” he says, too softly, and she just honestly thinks he’s really, genuinely trying to date her. She doesn’t get it. She thought they were on the same page. 

“Harry,” she whispers. He takes a deep breath like he doesn’t want to be let down gently. “We have a good thing going.” 

His thumb moves up the seam at the side of her dress, plays with the zipper pull there just under her arm. “Yeah. I know. And maybe I’ve misrepresented myself here, but you should know I don’t sit and talk and drink tea with women. Typically.”

Allie tilts her head, considers saying something about how he maybe shouldn’t talk about his other trysts while he’s trying to court her. But that’s not what he’s doing, and she thinks if she pushes hard enough, he’ll eventually just shut down and stop trying, and she realizes with some fear that she doesn’t want him to do that, either. 

She’s teasing when she says, “So you like my voice,” but he misses the joke and turns his head away, says her name. She laughs a little and turns him back to look at her. There’s something like pleading in his eyes. Like he’s done with this thing now and wants her to take him seriously. She should try to do that. “Why?”

He looks confused, which is cute on him. “Why what?”

“Why do you like me?” 

That came out way too vulnerable, and the only reason she doesn’t feel foolish for it is because he’s kind of leading the way here on vulnerability and now they’re both kind of putting it all out there, aren’t they? 

As soon as she’s said it, though, she also realizes she doesn’t want him to give her some cliche list. Like that she’s funny, and smart, and pretty, and good in bed. God, she’s tired of hearing those things from men, you know? And maybe that sounds conceited, but she’s just at a point in her life when she wants more. Anyone can see that she’s funny. She wants someone who understands her. 

She’s not saying that has to be Harry. She’s just saying that maybe there’s a chance it’s him. 

When he says, “I just do,” it’s honestly the best answer she could’ve hoped for, and she knows it shows on her face. She smiles too widely, and brushes her thumbs against his jaw, and he looks entirely too pleased with himself upon realizing he’s kind of won her over. “That was a good answer, huh?”

She tells him to shut up, leans in and presses her mouth against his. She almost wants to laugh at how quickly he’s tugging down her zipper, but that’s what she wants, too, so she doesn’t bring it up. 

“Wait,” he says when she starts unbuttoning his shirt. She stops, looks at him, rubs her lips together. He gives her this boyish grin that should be annoying, but isn’t. “You like me, too?”

Allie nods too quickly. He looks smug about it. She decides to just kiss him again instead of saying anything about that, either.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quiet warm summer mornings in bed

Allie has a hard time sleeping in past 8am. Harry does not have the same issue. The first few times she stayed with him overnight, she lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling, afraid to make any sudden movements to wake him up. Then she learned he’s a sound sleeper, and also stopped caring, more or less, if she ended up waking him any time after 9am on weekends.

It’s different in the summer. In particular, it’s different in the summer when they get away to the Hamptons, to the place they bought too soon in their relationship to be sensible. She’s good with her money and she’s been earning a salary better than she should at this age, because she’s able to do some very specific things that happen to be in high demand. And Harry’s...Well, Harry’s always been well off. Their approach to money is different. When they tossed around the idea of buying a summer place, she’d expressed that they’d only been officially dating four months and it was absolutely insane to purchase real estate together. Harry’d just said, “So what? I’ll do up an agreement,” as if it’s just that easy and didn’t have to be overcomplicated. 

Anyway, they bought the place she liked best, with its massive windows and chef’s kitchen and five minute walk to the beach. And their bedroom has floor to ceiling windows on one side, a view of the ocean, and so much natural sunlight that there’s really no sleeping in when the sun comes in like this. 

She loves it. She loves that they tend to wake up together. Loves that they banter over who has to go make and bring coffee back to bed.

Today, Harry loses. Allie’s moved to the middle of the bed and is stretching when he returns, his pants slung low on his lips and his hair all over the place. He’s a sight to behold, honestly. He sets down the mugs and then draws the curtains back and opens the sliding doors to let the air in. It’s a waste, honestly, because the AC is running, but they tend to do this on Saturdays and Sundays. 

“You wanna give me some room?” he asks, teasing, and Allie shakes her head. It’s also ridiculous of him to ask; they have a king size bed and she’s not that big. 

What he does instead of like, the sensible thing, and just getting in on his side, is lie down on top of her, the all white duvet between them, unfortunately. 

“Every time you do this, I know exactly what’s going through your head,” she says, and he just laughs, puts his hand up under her jaw.

“And what’s that?” 

They both know. It’s not difficult to put the pieces together, given their current position. 

“You’re going to suggest we stay in bed all day, and I’m going to remind you that we can’t, and you’re going to kiss me until I’m…”

He looks a little too pleased with himself. “Until you’re…?”

Allie just looks up at him, watches him, until he’s about to lean down to kiss her. She places both hands on his shoulders and pushes. 

“But coffee.”

Harry laughs, sighs, bends his head down and skates his lips across her collarbone before moving off her. They sip their coffee and read news on their phones or whatever. Allie plays some music and eventually, when their cups are empty, he says he should go shower so they can go do what they have to do. 

Allie asks if he wants company. She likes the way he looks at her when she surprises him.


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ice cream

He’s pretty sure her name is Allie. He heard that guy she was with last week say it, or something that sounded like it. Maybe Alex? Allison? No. No, it’s definitely Allie. 

He’s definitely being stupid about it. But she’s hotter than literally any other girl he’s seen this summer, so it’s not crazy to think of what it might take to get her to pay attention to him, too. 

He hopes she isn’t with that guy. They’re pretty close, he thinks - he keeps seeing them around. He wonders what she’s studying - she wears this cut off little Brown tee shirt she’s turned into a crop top. He wonders if it’s her family that has a place here, or what. It’s been a couple weeks since the first time he noticed her, so he doesn’t think she’s just on vacation. 

She smiles at him once when he’s on the beach walking with his sister and she’s with a girl who looks too much like her to not be her sister, too. Harry smiles back, and then his sister’s running towards the water and he takes off after her, because the literal one thing his mom said when she told them to get out of the house so the caterers could set up, was to not let the kid get her hair wet. 

On the Fourth of July when he’s wandering through town looking for something to do because staying at home with his mom’s lame friends. She’s not even supposed to still be here, and maybe it’s shitty of him to think this, which is why he hasn’t said it out loud, but this isn’t even her house anymore. It’s his. His dad left it to him in the will. But whatever. It’s not a battle he’s willing to fight with her. Not now. 

He sees the girl who’s been catching his eye for weeks now. She’s got a cup of ice cream in her hand and she’s wearing a black romper thing that looks insanely good on her. 

He panics because he’s legitimately bad at flirting when the stakes are high (when the girls are as hot as this one) and so when he’s in front of her and she’s smiling up at him, what he says is, “Where’d you get that?” and points to the dish in her hand. 

The name of the shop is right on the side. She shows him. “Mango’s the best. Pistachio is a close second.”

Yeah, he isn’t a big ice cream guy, so this was a stupid opener.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he tells her, and she grins up at him like she absolutely knows what he’s trying to do and that he’s bad at it. “I’m Harry.”

“Allie.”

So he was right. 

“Nice to meet you,” he says, and she eats a spoonful of her ice cream as she looks up at him. Shit. She’s even hotter when she’s right in front of him like this. “What are you up to tonight?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure yet. All my friends are working.” Okay, so she’s local. Or local enough that the people she knows have jobs around here. “You?”

He shrugs. “Nothing, really. My mom’s hosting friends. I hate fireworks.”

She hums, has another spoonful. “I know of a barbecue,” she tells him, then seems sort of nervous to have said anything. “Like a proper smokehouse. If you wanna check it out?”

Harry tries to remain calm and not just agree too fast. He nods towards her ice cream cup. “Starting with dessert?”

She lets out a little laugh. “I won’t be judged for my choices.”

Harry holds up his hands, and she’s seriously fucking cute when she tilts her chin up at him like that. 

“Lead the way,” he says, and then asks where she’s from and what she’s studying and a bunch of other questions he’s thought over the last few weeks. 

When he’s wiping barbecue sauce from his fingers and sitting across from her at this picnic table, watching as she sips her beer, he says, “You’re easy to talk to.”

He likes that her reply is, “I know.”

He likes that she kisses him on the beach when he’s walking her home, asks him for his number and tells him there’re a bunch of other restaurants she wants to try if he wants to join her. After he says yes, she asks if he wants to meet her for brunch tomorrow. His hands are on her hips and her he says if they’re gonna end up together in the morning, maybe they should just spend the night together. 

Allie grins up at him and says, “You know, you have a point,” and pulls him by the hand towards her house.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grilling veggies from the garden for dinner

She really hates zucchini. She hates it. It’s slimy, and weird, and unfortunately one of the only things Harry has yet learned to grow in their tiny garden behind their row house. 

And no, his pretentious ass calling it courgette does not make it any less disgusting.

He’s taken a week off because he literally hasn’t used a single vacation day, other than when they went to Dublin for a week, because he’s a workaholic. Allie’d insisted he take some time for himself, and when he’d said, “To do what?” she probably should’ve considered her severe distaste for this fucking vegetable. Because him being off has meant more time to ‘tend to his crops’ and that she’s expected to eat this thing every night for dinner in varying preparations.

(And look, she’s a supportive girlfriend. She is. Gardening helps him with his stress and anxiety, and he sort of really likes it. It started with small pots of herbs in the house in the winter, and a Christmas Cactus her grandma gave him. She encourages him because it’s good to see him with an outlet for his anxiety that isn’t work, or alcohol, or generally catastrophizing until he’s breathing into a paper bag.) 

Coming home to the house smelling amazing and her fine ass boyfriend standing in the backyard in his jeans and barefeet with barbecue tongs in his hand is…

“Well hello, Harry Homemaker,” she says, stepping through the sliding door. He snorts a laugh and glances over his shoulder. “Did you fold all the laundry?”

She noticed it in neat piles on the living room table. It’s not like they don’t split housework evenly - they do. Which is why it’s notable that he didn’t wait for her. 

“Mhm. And mopped, and emptied the dishwasher, and baked a cake.”

Her eyes light up, and she wraps her arms around him from behind and leans up to kiss his neck. “Tell me more.”

Yeah, he turns his head at that tone of voice and she just grins up at him. The sun gets in her eyes, but it’s fine. She likes the way he looks. She honestly thinks he’s spending most of his days out here while she’s not around, because his tan keeps getting deeper. It’s kind of ridiculous.

“Zucchini chocolate cake.”

She freezes. She thought he was joking about the cake. “Wait. You’re serious? You baked a cake? And put vegetables in it?”

Look, it’s not that she’s disappointed. She’s really trying not to be a shit about the fact that he’s making dinner - and apparently homemade baked goods - but god, would it’ve killed him to go for some funfetti?

He opens the lid on the grill and she sees he’s got a cast iron on there with a bunch of veggies, including sweet potatoes, red peppers, and yet more zucchini.

He seems to clock the look on her face as he moves things around in the pan. “I think they’re almost done.”

Allie nods. Maybe the cake is good. It could be good, right? Like, it’s still cake. 

“I’ll go change and wash up.”

“No, I mean...,” he says, grinning at her and reaching for her waist, pulling her close again. He maneuvers them so they’re not too close to the grill, drops a kiss to her lips. “I know you don’t like courgette.” She rolls her eyes. He keeps saying it in french on purpose. Either to show off or to be a smart ass. No. It’s both. It’s definitely both. “I don’t think there’re any more coming up.”

She doesn’t want to confirm it, even though she knows there is no sense lying to him or denying it. Honestly, she’ll eat whatever’s put in front of her that she didn’t have to make herself. And even she’ll admit that the pasta sauce he made last night was pretty good, but that’s probably because the pieces were so small she could barely notice them. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t broken out the graph paper to plan next summer’s garden,” she says, slides her hands up his back. He gets a very, very cute look on his face that lets her know he’s done something close to exactly what she’s said. 

“I’ve done some pretty extensive research on how to grow the best tomatoes.”

He’s grinning like this is something to be proud of, and Allie loves him so deeply all she can do is grin back. 

“I’ll go change, then you can tell me all about it?”

He winks at her, tells her there’s wine chilling in the fridge. 

The cake is in there, too. She’s very tempted to sneak a bite of it, but she won’t ruin the reveal, or whatever. She just pours them each a glass of moscato and joins him outside, and listens to him tell her his plans for the spring. She’ll have to put up with those weird trays of seedlings again in the spare bedroom that gets the most sunlight, but he’s so excited about it that she just sips her wine and nods along and pushes the zucchini around on her plate until he rolls his eyes and stabs a piece with his fork so he can eat it and she doesn’t have to.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m always flirting with you. Keep up.”

He’s not going to get into the details of how he ended up living in a house in L.A. with Allie, Becca and Will. It’s a very long and insane story that involves being bullied into letting them moved in. At least that’s how he remembers it. Becca tries to downplay it, but he knows the truth. The house is his - his name is on the deed and the mortgage comes out of his account - and while they all pay him rent on the first of the month and he’s technically their landlord, the place is definitely all of theirs. Which really sort of pissed him off in the beginning, but it’s been years now, and he doesn’t have strong opinions one way or the other, except to say (though never aloud) that he likes not being alone.

He thought it’d be just until they graduate, but like, no one’s brought up moving out and graduation was like, two years ago. He’s working in the Senator’s office, and Allie’s at an urban development firm. Becca’s in the production industry and Will’s working at this super famous test kitchen or something. They all have their shit. Their schedules are all over the place. 

Well, no. Becca’s and Will’s schedules are all over the place. Harry’s and Allie’s are pretty much the same. If there are ever only two people home, it’s usually the two of them. 

He’s making margaritas and Allie’s debating him over how long to leave the chicken in the marinade before putting it on the grill. She doesn’t trust him and texts Will for advice. Will’s reply comes with a cursory ‘y’all can’t fucking survive without me around, you’d starve’ kind of comment, and then also he admits Harry’s right. 

Harry sips his drink and grins at her and she rolls her eyes and sets her phone back down on the counter. 

“We shouldn’t drink on empty stomachs,” she says, but picks up her glass, anyway. Harry doesn’t really like tequila but she does. He makes some compromises sometimes. Usually where Allie’s concerned. Rarely when anyone else is. 

“Why not?” he asks, then leans forward on the counter, his forearms closer to her. He reaches out and plucks at the bottom of this absolutely ridiculous crop top she’s wearing with the NASA logo on the front. “Good things tend to happen when you drink on an empty stomach.”

Allie glares at him, but he’s kind of being serious. Last time they did this, she ended up blasting Taylor Swift in their backyard and convincing him to dance with her, his hands low on her hips, touching bare skin because it was the middle of summer and she was wearing a bikini top with her cotton shorts and…

Okay, look. Allie’s his favourite roommate. Honestly, he thinks sometimes she’s his favourite person, period. He likes hanging out with her and talking to her and getting advice from her and also looking at her. It’s been a long time since he’s felt all that for a woman.

Becca keeps telling him he absolutely cannot act on it. Mostly, Harry wonders how Becca can see it but Allie can’t.

“Just because you’re a closet Swiftie doesn’t mean that had anything to do with us drinking together.”

Harry smirks, stands back upright, looks down at her. “I didn’t say anything about us drinking together.”

She glares, but it’s playful and mostly just comes off cute, to him. “It was implied.” He hums, crosses his arms. Allie’s staring up at him, then shakes her head and huffs a breath. She’s still smiling, though. “I just really want tacos.”

Harry laughs. “We live in L.A.,” he reminds her. “We can definitely just go get tacos. Unless…” 

He stops himself. Yeah, he’s a flirt, but he’s aware there’s a line. Becca’s always quick to remind him there’s a line. 

“What?” Allie asks, looking up at him as she brings her glass to her lips. She’s been doing something different with her makeup lately. He thinks it’s highlighter on the tip of her nose, or something. And the only reason he knows any of that shit is because he lives with two women, and sometimes they watch beauty industry people on YouTube or whatever. 

Any time he’s this close to her, all he can think about is kissing her. He distracts himself by thinking of random shit so he doesn’t end up just doing it. Because for all the time they spend together, he can’t really get a read on whether or not she’d be okay with it. And for all his annoyance with Becca for giving him unsolicited advice on this, he knows she’s a little right. The only way he could make a move is if he knew without a doubt that Allie wanted it. 

“Unless what you really want is to just stay in with me.”

Yeah. To hell with it. 

Allie smiles widely, covers it by taking another drink. Then she looks away. 

She turns back to him, then bends her leg so her knee hits his. He isn’t sure if that’s on purpose. It’s not like they never touch each other. Allie’s a pretty touchy-feely person with the people she’s closest to. He happens to be glad he’s one of them. 

“Are you flirting with me, Harry?”

He doesn’t mean to laugh. He doesn’t. That’s just…

He reaches up, flicks her hair off her shoulder, gives her a little grin. 

“I’m always flirting with you,” he says, because if he’s being called out on it, he might as well not deny it. She honestly wouldn’t have said anything if she wasn’t prepared for an answer. “Keep up.”

He’s expecting her to roll her eyes and tell him to cut it out, to quit using his charm on her, or something. She’s done that before. He’d just teased her and said it was okay if she couldn’t handle it, that lots of women can’t. 

This time, she reaches out with her right hand, grabs the front of his shirt at his stomach and pulls. He moves closer to her, lets his hands do what they want, which is reach out for her waist to keep them close, and looks down at her. 

“Why?” she asks, which he absolutely wasn’t expecting. It’s kind of absurd. Why? Like, does she not realize that he’s…

“Why what?”

She blinks, rubs her lips together and then maybe she doesn’t mean for it to happen, but her eyes drop down to his mouth for a second before looking back up. 

“What’s your endgame, here?” 

Yeah, that question? That makes him take a deep breath. Because as much as he has legitimate feelings for her, as much as he thinks he wants to be with her, he also really wants to take her to bed, too. Has wanted it probably since he was like, 16, or something stupid like that.

He says, “That kind of depends on you,” because it’s true, isn’t it? 

And you’d think her kissing him wouldn’t clear it up, not really, but she slides her hand - cold, from holding her icy drink in her hand - up onto the back of his neck slowly, and leans up to press her lips to his all gently, and Harry’s thinking he’s definitely picking up on what she’s communicating.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Come on, this doesn’t even make it into the top 10 of stupid things I’ve done. You’re completely overreacting.”

If she’d known he was her boss’ kid, she wouldn’t have hooked up with him. 

Probably. Likely. 

No, definitely. She definitely wouldn’t have. Even if he looks that fucking good and flirted with her the way he did, the way that made it genuinely fun to flirt back. If he had reached out to push her hair back and brushed his fingers against her neck that way and…

She probably still wouldn’t have done it. Probably. 

Finding out he’s the boss’ kid by walking into the office, seeing him there, being introduced to him and learning his last name a week after going home with him for what was definitely meant to be a one night stand…

See, she’d gone out to celebrate her last day at her last job. Then took a week off. And now, on her very first fucking day at her new firm, the guy she hooked up with is sitting in the conference room looking like he doesn’t want to laugh, and she really just can’t handle that. 

Karen welcomes her, which Allie isn’t expecting. She sort of thought the name partner of this place wouldn’t take time out of her day to greet the new hire. But here they are, with coffee and croissants spread out on the table, all the partners and associates of this small firm greeting her and welcoming her. 

“Sorry, what was your name?” Harry asks, cup of coffee in his hand, grin on his face, and Allie clenches her teeth. She can’t make a scene. She’s mad at him for being so much better at remaining calm about this.

“It’s Allie,” she says, which makes him smirk and sip his coffee. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Feel like I know you already.” Allie takes a deep, steadying breath. Honestly, all this would be a lot easier if she wasn’t genuinely interested in him. Really, she’d thought he was kind of nice and funny and...okay, also he’s really good in bed, and she’s spent the last week wishing she’d gotten his number. “It should be fun working together.”

She tilts her head. One of the other partners interrupts them to introduce himself officially, and Allie welcomes it. 

-

It’s a full three weeks before she and Harry are put on a case together. It means late nights in the library and spreading out case files and arguing over what to order for take out when they get too hungry to focus. Allie catches him checking her out when she’s wearing a dress and takes her blazer off. Allie absolutely checks him out when he shrugs off his jacket and undoes the knot of his tie after everyone else has gone home. 

“Let’s get a drink,” he says when it becomes clear they’re no longer productive this late at night. They’ve been at this a week. She hasn’t been home before 10pm since last Friday, and the only meal she’s ‘cooked’ for herself in as long is breakfast, which, admittedly, was two toaster waffles with peanut butter. 

She shakes her head. “That’s a bad idea.”

Harry looks at her from across the table, his elbow sort of draped over the back of the chair. If he weren’t so hot, this would all be easier. “No, it’s not.”

That makes her laugh, but she’s smiling at him and he grins back. “That argument work in court?”

He rolls his eyes, gathers up his notepads and stacks them atop his laptop. “You’re not a judge.”

“Yet,” she says, her brow raised. Harry laughs a little, quietly. She doesn’t recall why she told him her career aspirations, but that feels unimportant at the moment, when he’s practically inviting her to bed with him again and she’s unable to think of a very good reason not to say yes. 

“One drink,” he says, stands, and Allie...She just looks up at him, and they stare at each other, and then he smiles, and she sighs and gets up, too. The fact that he knows he’s won without her saying anything is annoying. “I know a place.”

“I’m not going to your apartment.”

“Presumptuous, much?” She pins him with a look as she packs her items into her bag. “It’s a members’ only club. You can be my guest. It’s quiet.”

She doesn't care about any of that, really. And when they get there, it’s the kind of stuffy place she was expecting, with dark furniture and too much wood and scotch that’s so expensive she doesn’t want to know the price of. And she doesn’t need to, because Harry pays without them even talking about it. 

When he presses her back against his bed and gets his hands up under her dress, she looks up at his ceiling and chastises herself for giving into her temptations. Then he touches her and she really stops giving a fuck, because it feels good and she wants to let herself have that. 

It’s not until the morning that she sort of freaks out about it. Admittedly, she’s a little pissed because she cannot find her underwear and he’s still mostly asleep as she tries to get ready. At least it’s a Saturday morning and she doesn’t have anywhere to be. Which…

He reaches for her wrist when she goes to his side of the bed to look, and he tugs, and says, “What’s your rush?” in this voice that very clearly betrays what he’s actually trying to do. Which is get her to stop getting dressed. To get her naked again. To have her again. 

“No,” she says, though she’s laughing. He just grins at her and leans back against the pillows. “This can’t happen again. I’m not doing this again.”

He looks genuinely sad about it, but Allie just has to draw a line somewhere. She thought she already had, but clearly that didn’t work and she needs to summon up some more willpower. 

“Why?”

She glares, holds up her hand so she can count the reasons off on her fingers. “We work together.” He rolls his eyes, annoyed. “Your mother is my boss.”

“She’s my boss, too. Don’t see me freaking out about it.”

She clenches her jaw and is not going to tell him it’s not the same, because he knows that. He’s got to know that. She also lets out a huff and bends down, looks under his bed, and then stands upright and pushes her hair back. 

“This isn’t a debate,” she tells him, then turns around to look behind her again. 

The way he says, “Try the living room,” pisses her off and she spins to look at him. He seems very pleased with himself. Likely because...like, sure, that’s where he got them off her. But he doesn’t have to act like that. It’s irritating. “Or just go without.”

She narrows her eyes at him, unamused. “This isn’t some fantasy, okay,” she says, and means it, except he looks...Honestly, that look more than anything else could really get her back into his bed. “I’m not leaving my panties here for you.”

Yeah. Yeah, he definitely thinks that’s hot. 

“Come here,” he says, leans up, reaches for her hand. His voice is soft and it’s lost some of the arrogance he had earlier. That’s the only reason she stops moving. “You’re making it seem like this is forbidden, or something.”

Allie scoffs. “I’ve read the HR policy more recently than you. It’s definitely bad. Not to mention stupid.”

“Come on, this doesn’t even make it into the top 10 of stupid things I’ve done. You’re completely overreacting.”

She smiles without wanting to. “That’s not comforting.”

“Allie.” Oh. Fuck. He’s too soft. Too gentle. Too...Too much. “I kinda like you, you know?” No. No, she didn’t know. She feels herself soften, too. She puts her hand on his shoulder, which she can tell he likes. “And you might as well stop trying to convince me I shouldn’t.”

Is that what she’s been doing? Or is it that she’s been trying to convince herself she shouldn’t like him?

When he leans up to kiss her, she lets him. She shouldn’t do that either, but she doesn’t fight it because it’s what she wants and maybe he’s right. 

“Okay but.” He grins up at her, seemingly happy to have won this round, and then slides his hands up her sides. “Have you seen my underwear?”

The smug smirk is back, and then he pulls her all close until she has to rest her knee on the bed between his legs. And he says something absolutely filthy that she should not be turned on by in the slightest but. 

She really just feels like she might as well give into it.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I wasn’t the one who walked away from us. You were.”

Her dad warned him that she might show up with someone, so when she walks in alone, he’s surprised and realizes he’s been holding tension in his body since he ran into Jim yesterday at the grocery store. He and Jim have always gotten along better than anyone else in that family. Like, other than Allie herself, Jim’s always been the one who was kind and nice to him, and they bonded over the three years he and Allie were…

Harry isn’t sure what to call them. Best friends seems like underselling it. But she was never his girlfriend. No, he tried. He really tried. And he thought it was going to happen when they slept together four months ago, but then everything sort of blew up and he hasn’t spoken to her since September.

He doesn’t feel good about it. He really doesn’t. He’s been in love with her in some sense of the word for easily two and a half years. 

The ice is melting in his glass when she walks in looking every bit as pretty as she always has, and then she takes off her coat and Harry has to look away. He walks back through the kitchen and into the formal dining room, where a few people are playing poker. He watches Jason lose two hands in a row and doesn’t want to stay here, either, but he also can’t go back out there and see her in that outfit, her button down shirt slouching a little and the gold necklaces she’s got on catching the light and making him want things he can’t have.

He likes that she’s alone, but he also wants to know who she’s been seeing that she felt close enough to to bring home for Christmas. 

He needs a refill. No, his glass isn’t empty. That’s not the point or what he said. He forgoes ice, pours more scotch, and then he notices Will’s watching her, too. Harry laughs to himself, shakes his head and takes a drink. 

Literally nothing’s changed. Allie’s the centre of both his and Will’s attention, and acting like she doesn’t know that’s an undeniable fact. Harry just knows that for the past few years, he took up the mantle of best friend, and Will was off traveling and doing whatever and those two drifted apart. 

Harry watches her walk towards Will and…

They hug, and they’re talking, and Harry wonders if this is what Jim was warning him about. 

“They’re not together.”

Harry turns around probably too fast, sees Cassandra in her sparkly dress with her glass of champagne poised near her lips. He knows his reaction probably gives him away; he doesn’t startle that easy. 

“Who?”

Something like amusement shines in her eyes, but she doesn’t call him out on it, which he appreciates in a houseful of people who don't know about him and Allie and his feelings and the fact that they hooked up and ruined everything. Cassandra’s acting like she does know. Which he’s not at all surprised about, but is, for some reason, still annoyed by.

“Dad thought he saw something he didn’t see,” she says, and then he wonders how much that family talks about him, because he seems to be on their minds a lot. Well, on everyone’s minds but Allie’s, which...She’s the only one he really cares to think about him. “He told me he bumped into you. I’m just...setting the record straight.”

Harry doesn’t mean to laugh, but like. What the fuck is she on about?

“And what record’s that, Cassandra?” he asks, because yeah, he’s trying to play it cool here, but he also wants to know what’s going on. Wants to know what Cassandra knows. 

But she’s too smart for that. 

“I’m not the one you should be talking to about that.”

He doesn’t like the smug way she says it, the little tilt of her head, the grin. He notices her glass is nearing empty and doesn’t want to keep talking about this or push his luck. He’s not stupid enough to think this won’t get back to Allie regardless of whether he wants it to. He reaches for the bottle out of the ice bucket and tops her off. 

“Thanks,” she says, and he replies, “Yeah,” instead of thanking her, too. Because if nothing else, she did stop him from spiraling and thinking Allie’s with Will. 

Luke’s sister hits on him because Luke’s sister’s been hitting on him since he was 16. And Harry’s never shut it down completely because he thinks it’d be kind of an asshole move. He doesn't lead her on, by any means, but the couple times a year he sees her, she smiles at him and talks to him and flips her hair and laughs at his jokes. It’s innocent. 

Allie’s looking at him from across the room like she’s bothered by it. She plays with the tip of her ear and looks away when he glances over. He sips his drink to cover how he truly feels about it. But he’s glad she’s seeking him out in the crowd the same way he’s doing with her. 

It’s not even midnight when he realizes he’s not drunk enough, doesn’t want to change that, and decides he’s tired of being here. Allie’s not talking to him, and he thinks she’s not going to talk to him, and he just doesn’t really see a point in staying just to feel like shit about the fact that they clearly can’t even manage to say hello to one another, or whatever. 

He heads back to the spare room to grab his coat. His keys fall out of his pocket and onto the floor after he’s dug it out of the pile on the bed. When he stands and pockets them, he notices, when he’s shrugging his coat on, that Allie’s standing in the doorway watching him. 

“Hey,” he says, because he doesn’t think she’s going to say anything. 

She says, “Hey,” and then has this little smile on her lips that makes his heart stutter in his chest. Which he fucking hates. His emotions are betraying them. He buttons his coat and Allie steps in the room, closes the door behind her. It seems she wants him to stop getting ready to leave. “You’re leaving?”

Honestly, the only thing that could get him to stay is her. There’s no way she doesn’t know that. 

He kind of doesn't want to give her the satisfaction.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” She chews at the corner of her lip and Harry just watches. “How are you?”

He sighs. He doesn’t want to make fucking small talk with her and act like they don’t know one another better than that. 

“I’m fine,” he tells her, adds a little nod, though there’s no way that’ll help actually convince her. She knows him too well. “You?”

She lifts one shoulder. “Same.”

She’s lying. She’s lying, but she won’t just tell him this is hard for her, too. And that’s the whole problem. She lets him feel everything, lets him talk about it, and she never really meets him where he is. 

Harry purses his lips, nods in her direction, and heads for the door. She steps into his path, though, says, “Wait.” 

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. Allie reaches up and undoes the button of his jacket at the stomach. Which isn’t really a thing at all, except he definitely remembers the last time she was undressing him, and so when he looks down at her, he...He just really needs to know what she’s playing at. 

Maybe asking, “For what?” is a dick move, but it feels true, like something he needs to do, for him, and then she’s looking up at him from under her lashes, and he...Honestly, he wishes he wasn’t so attracted to her.

“I thought we could talk. We should be able to talk.”

Excuse him for laughing. 

“You just ignored me all night and spent it with Will,” he reminds her. He shouldn’t have to tell her that if she wants him around her, she maybe shouldn’t act like she’s into someone else. “And you haven’t contacted me in months. So what do you want to talk about all of a sudden?”

She gets all frustrated, says, “I don’t know! Us?”

Harry feels himself set his jaw, clench his teeth because he doesn’t want to say something mean. “We’re not much of an us, are we?”

The way she says, “Not anymore,” sounds like an accusation, and he really just does not appreciate it. It’s also just patently untrue. They were never an us, not the way he wanted. Not the way she’s implying now.

She’s saying it like they were more than a friendship ended by a one night stand. 

He’s fucking tired, and he doesn’t want to fight with her, and it seems really weird to do it in a spare room at Luke’s house in their hometown when they live a dozen blocks from one another in the city and obviousy have each others’ numbers. 

But he also thinks he’ll hate himself if he walks away from this conversation and doesn’t at least try to get somewhere. Maybe it won’t resolve anything and they’ll still go back to not talking, but it only feels right to try. 

He’s also just...He doesn’t have it in him to start from the beginning and sort out every single one of their issues. He figures he’ll start with the big one. 

“I’m not the one who walked away from us. You were.” 

Allie just looks at him, and he’s expecting an argument, but after a moment, she just nods silently, and even just her admitting he’s right throws him off. Because what he’s said is pretty fucking heavy. This is the most they’ve acknowledged it since the day she told him she’s not ready. Whatever the fuck that meant. And the only reason he’s bitter about it is that he tried to get her to explain how she was feeling and she couldn’t. 

“Because it’s scary.” He blinks. She said that, too. He’d kind of like to hear new things. “Because you look at me like...like this, and it makes me feel like I’m losing my mind.” 

That literally makes no sense. 

“How am I looking at you?”

She smiles just a little, and he’s getting mixed messages. “I just know I’ve missed you. More than I’ve missed anyone. And I’m really struggling with why I won’t just let this happen.”

“You didn’t answer the question.” It feels important. She puts her hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t know what to do with that, either. “And I can’t tell you why you won’t let it happen. I have some theories, but…”

“What’re your theories?” She’s smiling, which gets one out of him, too, but he shakes his head. He’s not her fucking therapist, either. “Look, can we…” She stops, walks over to the bed and grabs her own coat. “Can we at least go somewhere and talk?”

He won’t even pretend he wants to say no. He wishes he were that strong. 

“It’s late in West Ham. Not many places to go.”

She shrugs, pulls her jacket on and then reaches out and does his button up again, which...He catches her hand because honestly it’s been too long since he touched her. Way too long. 

“Why don’t you take me wherever you were about to go?” she asks, and she obviously knows he was going to go home. It’s a short walk to his house. He thinks her little heels are still gonna hurt her feet, and it’s really freaking cold out.

He sighs, mostly at himself for how badly he wants to kiss her right now, press her right up against the door behind her. 

But he says, “Okay,” and she smiles at him like he’s given her exactly the thing she wanted. It’s a good reminder, maybe, that this is important to her. That maybe it’s as important to her as it is to him. That maybe they’re finally on the same page. 

She takes his hand and they slip out the back door so no one will see. Her little mitten is warm against his palm and he likes that she’s done it, even if she lets go as soon as they’re outside.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You look like you need a hug.”

He tends to head to London on weekends when he doesn’t have too much work because Oxford is boring. Honestly. Not that he isn’t happy to be studying here, or doesn’t have friends or whatever, but London’s more exciting and there’s more to do and he wants to see as much as he can while he’s here. 

He’s got friends here, too. But he finds himself spending more of his time wandering around alone and looking at things. Harry likes looking at things. Particularly old things he knows the history of or can learn. He spent a week in the summer in Scotland because he wanted to check out some ruins. He didn’t tell anyone that was why. But anyway. 

Seeing pretty girls who catch his attention isn’t anything new. 

Seeing a pretty girl who’s wearing a Yale tee shirt and looks like she’s about to cry is… Yeah, she gets his attention and keeps it for more than a passing glance. 

“You okay?” he asks, and she looks up at him quickly. She’s just staring. He gets it, kind of. The first time an American spoke to him after he got here, it threw him for a loop, too. “You look like you need a hug.”

That...That was the fucking dumbest thing to say, wasn’t it? 

But this girl, this woman with the blonde hair and the tee shirt from his alma mater, she just raises a brow and moves over on the bench she’s sitting on so he can join her. So maybe she’s used to American dudes who put their foot in their mouth around her. 

“I was just at the church at the Tower.” Harry nods. He visited last year, too, when he wanted to knock all the touristy historic shit off his list. “Just thinking about the women buried there who didn’t deserve beheading.” 

“Ah.” Harry crosses one leg over the other. “Anne Boelyn and Catherine Howard, right?”

She looks surprised he knows, then adds, “And Jane Grey.” Right. He knew that, too. “Anyway, I got really mad. And then I got sad.” 

He breathes a little laugh, not that it’s funny. “Understandable.” For some reason, he thinks this woman in particular won’t mind if he states his actual opinion. “It’s crazy how much hasn’t changed, right?”

“Mm.” She turns to look at him. “That’s why I got sad.” He nods. This is heavy. “I’m Allie.”

“Harry.” He extends his hand, which she shakes, but then she gives him a sly little grin he might actually fall for a little. 

“I could use that hug, but I’ll settle for the handshake.”

He smiles back, enjoying more than he really wants to admit that she’s being forward. 

“The hug’s still on the table,” he tells her, which makes her laugh. 

“You know what else always cheers me up?” He kinks his brow, thinks he likes where this is going. Especially when she leans closer to him. He can’t help if he glances at her lips - if he thinks that’s what’s about to happen. “Food. Shall we?”

She stands, reaches for his hand, and he doesn’t have much of a choice but to let her take him with her, does he?


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Is it weird that was a total turn on?”

Allie scares the hell out of him. 

From the first night he meets her, when she flirts with him and kisses him to make some guy jealous, tells him that before she does it, and then grabs him by the hand and tells him to run when her ex starts towards them. 

Like, literally. Literally, he lets this girl take his hand and sprint out of a house and across a snowy lawn with the entire wrong kind of shoes on and their coats under his arm. 

“I’m not a fighter. I don’t know how,” he says, and she laughs at him and then presses her cold hands against his face and asks if he wants to come somewhere with her. 

It might legitimately be her looks alone that have him saying yes. 

She makes him play truth or dare with him to earn her number. They’re sitting on a freezing curbside sharing an order of McDonalds fries when she asks him to tell her about when he lost his virginity. He wants to run again. She looks at him like it’s some kind of challenge, some game she plays with guys and most don’t pass the test because they won’t answer this question. Harry...He’s too competitive to lose because of his own stubbornness. 

Three weeks later, she asks if he wants to buy her dinner on Valentine’s Day, but in a totally platonic way. They end up drinking mezcal and eating tacos at this amazing place he loves that she’s never been to before. She comments on the sizable tip he leaves, then presses him up against the side of the building and kisses the breath from his lungs. In the back of the Uber on the way to her place, she slides her hand over the front of his pants with the driver right there, and then laughs when Harry clears his throat and kind of gently pushes her away. 

This time, he says, “You’re gonna kill me,” when he’s pressed against her inside his apartment, and all she does in return is shake her head and loop her arms around his neck.

She’s late to meet him the next time, when they’d made plans to get together after class. When he texts her, she says she’s sorry she forgot, and that he can come over if he wants. He doesn’t really think...Look, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like being stood up. Doesn’t like feeling unimportant. He, in fact, spends a lot of time reminding people that he’s important. It feels shitty that she forgot about him entirely. But it’s not like he can tell her he has any kind of good reason not to go. He doesn’t think his own ego really means anything right now.

When he arrives, he can see her from the sidewalk, because she’s standing on the front porch of this little house she rents with friends, and that guy from the party is there, too, standing way too close to her. Which isn’t a thing Harry’s have any right to think, except she looks really fucking uncomfortable. He starts walking a little faster towards her, can see the second her relief shows that he’s here. 

He doesn’t think she invited him knowing there’d be something like this happening when he arrived. Like, the stuff he knows about her - which isn’t a ton - doesn’t really scream that she likes drama. And yeah, their first meeting she used him to make this guy jealous, but that seemed all fun and games. 

Harry steps onto the porch in time to hear this guy call her a pretty awful name Harry, himself, reserves reserved for only the worst politicians.

“Hey,” he says, voice sounding sharp, and the guy turns around and looks at him like he’s interrupting. Which he is. But he doesn’t give a fuck. “Is there a problem?”

The guy laughs bitterly, steps away from Allie, but not before reaching out and trying to touch his fingers to her chin, for some reason. She recoils away and looks like she might literally be two seconds from smacking this guy. Again, Harry doesn’t really know her all that well, but he does find himself questioning her taste. Which isn’t fair. 

“No problem,” the guy says, then shakes his head and brushes past Harry to walk down the porch steps. “Good luck.”

Then he mumbles that same name again, and Harry can’t fucking help himself. He’s feeling pissed and defensive and protective over this girl he’s been on like, two dates with, but who makes him feel all lit up inside. 

He heads down the stairs, gets the guy’s attention, and as soon as he’s turned around, Harry swings and lands a punch right to the corner of the guy’s mouth. Harry’s blood is rushing in his ears and he can’t hear whatever thing it is the guy says to him before he walks off. Allie’s hand is on his, pulling him inside and saying his name and then pressing him against her kitchen counter, throwing her arms around him. His hand hurts like hell, his knuckles throbbing when he sets his hand on her hip. 

“You said you’re not a fighter,” she says against his heck, her voice hoarse. He pushes her away a little. She sets her shaking hands on his shoulders. It’s really, really bothering him that she seems so scared. Like, he can’t stop thinking about it. “He was texting me all day, and then he just showed up. That wasn’t...It’s not like the party. This isn’t some game.”

“No shit,” he mumbles, then rests his good hand on her cheek and strokes his thumb there hoping to calm her down. She takes three deep breaths and lets them out, then presses her lips gently against his. “You’re okay?”

She smiles up at him, her eyes shining. He thinks she likes him. “Yeah.” She reaches for his hand and pulls it between them. His knuckles are red and starting to swell. “Is it weird that was a total turn on?” she asks him, her voice all low like it was that night in the Uber, that night in his bed. 

Harry doesn’t know if it’s weird or not, but he does like that this is her reaction. Not that he plans on throwing another punch like, ever. 

“Hanging out with you is an adventure,” he says, then brushes his lips against hers. She moves away, laughing, and reaches into the freezer. She pulls out this ice pack and wraps it in a towel, hands it to him. 

“Is that a good thing?” 

She looks like she wants him to say yes. Saying no doesn’t even cross his mind.


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chef au

**Part I**

This is really and truly the most offensive gift she’s ever been given. Like, she knows she’s not producing anything restaurant-quality from her kitchen, but she knows her way around enough to feed herself and not get scurvy. Her sister signing her up for a 10 week cooking course as a Christmas gift is so stupid and ridiculous she wants to tell her to fuck off. But what she does instead is say thank you, because she’s not an asshole and Cassandra’s intentions are good. And Allie’s too prideful not to try to learn and master new things. Likely what her sister was banking on, to be honest. 

She shows up to this loft space in Brooklyn, just two stops away from her own place. It’s set up with different cooking stations, and she’s the first one to arrive. There’s one other person here. He’s wearing a dark coloured fancy apron and chopping something at the front of the room. He smiles when he sees her, and she slips her coat off. 

“Allie,” she says, reaching out her hand. He wipes his on his apron and shakes hers. 

“Harry. Your instructor.”

He looks vaguely familiar, and it takes her a few seconds to clue in that he’s the fancy chef she read about in the New Yorker. He’s the guy who does pop up dinner parties with a roster of celebrity guests and makes a bunch of money for charity and stuff. 

Figures, he’d be more handsome in person and wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Like, who cooks wearing a white shirt? That’s just asking for a hefty dry cleaning bill. 

She follows him through the space, trying to listen as he tells her she’s the first to arrive, so she can be up front. “With me,” he adds, and is way too freaking charming. 

She glances around again. There’s exposed brick and huge windows and a little seating area, plus one long table off to the side. There’s soft music playing and she can smell garlic or something else aromatic. If he designed all this, he’s got a great sense for ambiance. Allie sits on the stool at her station, or whatever, and checks the time on her watch. 

“Wine?” he offers, wiggling the cork loose from the bottle easily. 

She shakes her head. “I’m clumsy. I’m sure you don’t want anyone cutting off a finger.”

He laughs a little, sets the bottle back down and then reaches for a decanter. “Let’s keep your head clear,” he says. 

Allie takes a deep breath as she watches the arms of his muscle as he decants the wine. 

Only one other person shows up. Harry stands too close to her when she’s chopping an onion. He tells her she’s actually great with a knife, and she feels too good about the stupid compliment as he walks over to check on his other student, or whatever. 

She jumps a little when they drop the herbs for the pomodoro into the hot oil. Harry smiles, gently shows her how to lay the herbs in the oil to not burn her flesh, explains something about water content and hot oil that she should probably pay closer attention to than she does. 

Week two, they braise beef in dutch ovens and he teaches them how to make an easy pan sauce. There’s a lot of waiting and little chopping, so Allie drinks a glass of wine as they sit. Harry asks if she wants to learn how to make the easiest peanut butter cookies ever, and she nods quickly and he looks way too happy. 

The fourth week, she’s the only one who shows up. There’s a glass of wine already at her station. He tells her it’s bread week, no knives at all, and, “You don’t seem too clumsy to me, anyway.” He stands next to her, his elbow bumping hers occasionally, and asks her how her week was, and how that piece she was writing ended up, and Allie likes him. Shit. Her hands are covered in flour and dough and her arms are tired from kneading and Harry’s smiling at her and telling her she’s doing great. They make grilled cheese - her choice - with warm bread and he makes some absolutely incredible dipping sauce he promised would change her life. 

Week seven he tells them they’re amping up their skills and making risotto. Allie’s watched enough episodes of Chopped to know this is going to be a fucking nightmare. He sees the look on her face and tells her to relax and it’ll be totally worth it in the end. The result is this mushroom and white wine dish that she plates up nicely and Harry takes a bite of and says, “Good job, Pressman,” and Allie hates that she fucking blushes. 

Cassandra asks her how it’s going and Allie shrugs a shoulder and tries to think of food and not Harry. She knows she should report back something about her increased skill level, but instead she does the stupid thing and invites her sister over for dinner in a couple weeks. Cassandra jokes that she wants Thai from the place around the corner if things go sideways. Allie tries not to be hurt by the barb. 

It’s raining for class nine. Allie shows up in wet jeans and her hair drenched, and she slips the elastic off her wrist and pulls her hair up off her neck. Harry’s next to her, looking at her with dark eyes and offering her a clean kitchen towel to dry off. She apologizes for being a mess. He replies, “I see no mess, Allie.”

She’s never had a thing for a guy like him before. She firmly does now. He offers her a cup of tea to warm up. Allie cradles it between her hands and listens to him tell her about his dinner on the weekend. She asked; she’d seen it on Instagram. 

“You should come sometime,” he says, and Allie laughs, looks at him with a raised brow. He’s leaning on her station, hands clasped, as she sits on her stool close to him. Ugh. 

“What income bracket do you think I’m in, Harry?” she laughs. He smiles and looks down. 

“I know a guy who could get you a spot.”

Oh shit. 

She feels like she can probably flirt at this point, so she says, “I wouldn’t say no,” when they’re eyes are locked. 

Two more people join and Harry goes back into pro chef mode, tells them they’re poaching trout tonight. 

Her last class, she slips her phone number into his palm before she leaves, and sort of loves the little grin on his lips as she does it. Before she can pull her hand away, he’s tugging her towards him. Her hand ends up against his chest over his apron. She’s searching his yes when he presses his hand to the small of her back. 

“Star student,” he tells her, and Allie laughs. Her heart is beating fast and she really wants to kiss him. “I think you’re kinda great.” Allie has no idea what to say to that. “Stick around?”

“Are you putting me on dish duty, or something?” she teases. 

Harry shakes his head. His eyes search her face. “I live upstairs. I’ll make you dessert.”

**Part II**

She’s slept with him on a total of four occasions when he texts her the name of a building, a time on Saturday, and that she can just give her name at the door. She knows what this is; one of his fancy dinner parties. She tries not to stress about having to find something to wear on short notice - literally two days’ notice.

No, instead, she thinks of just this past Sunday morning, when she’d woken up in his bed to the smell of something cooking and he’d made her crepes suzette and an americano and she’d sat, wearing just her bra and panties, at his kitchen island with her legs all tangled up with his. He’d been shirtless and disheveled, stubble on his jaw, and Allie’d cast aside the desire low in her body just long enough to eat. 

The time before that, she’d asked if he wanted to grab dinner and she took him to her favourite sandwich shop, admitting to feeling immense pressure to impress him with her selection. He’d just laughed and told her that most chefs he knows will literally eat almost anything between two pieces of bread as long as there’s good mayo or mustard and some kind of cheese. And anyway, he’d told her she chose well. It’s stupid that she was so pleased with herself. 

(Pleased, too, later, to have taken him to her place for the first time. Pleased with the way he’d pressed her against the closed door and sucked a mark into her collarbone that took four days to fade. Pleased with the way he’d been speaking in her ear, urging her to come for him, just before she let go.)

She doesn’t even know what they are. They’re just sleeping together? Like, it’s been about a month since her last class - since him making her dessert turned into him kissing chocolate from her lips and telling her he’d wanted to do that since the first week when she’d walked through the door. 

She’s trying to play it cool, okay? Because he’s kind of a big deal, and he’s busy and important and now that she’s like, doing whatever this is with him, it sort of feels like there’s pressure to be cool and calm and not make a big deal of the fact that like…Okay, so when she was looking up photos earlier, Jennifer Lawrence was at his last dinner. And A$AP Rocky. And Taylor Swift. When she was hanging out with Harry at that sandwich shop, he got a text from Michael B. Jordan. 

What the hell is she supposed to do with that, other than just go with it until it stops feeling good, right? 

She calls him, asks what she’s supposed to wear to this thing. He’s laughing when he says, “Who cares? You’re gorgeous.” 

It’s not an answer at all. She wishes she had a brightly coloured suit to pull out, but it’s not like she has a reason for that kind of thing. She’s got a couple blazers, but they’re like, things she wears to work when she has a meeting with someone important, or whatever. They’re J. Crew, and nothing fancier than that. 

It’s fully spring now, and so she doesn’t want to do anything too dark in colour. She rents white mini dress covered in all these little sequins. It’s short but appropriate and makes her look taller than she is, and she has these burgundy heels she thinks look hot with it. 

The guy at the door is in a suit, and has an earpiece and gives her a nice smile when she walks up. There’re a bunch of photographers and Allie almost wants to laugh at how literally none of them are taking her photo; she’s no one to them. Just someone they probably - wrongly - assume has enough money to attend this party. 

Her name is first on the list. Guest of the Chef. 

When she walks in, she feels glamorous in a way she’s never felt before. She knows the decor is different every time, but this is like, hyper masculine, with brown leather seats at all the tables, and all this dark wrought iron throughout the place, and like, copper lights and stuff. There are live edge wood tables as bars and bourbon barrels and all these dark moody florals. If he dreamed all this up - and she knows he has help with this part of it, but like…

She thinks her dress makes her stand out, because it does not at all go with this theme, but she doesn’t mind it. It’s not in a bad way. She doesn’t clash. 

She sits down at her table where her name is, and like...Okay, she’s not gonna name names, but there’s a super prominent Tony winner next to her, and she wants to laugh at how absurd this all is. 

The rest is sort of a fever dream of fundraising and conversation, and Tony winner’s wife, this gorgeous woman who’s incredibly smart and impressive, tells Allie she’s actually read some of her work. Allie says something about writing a novel, which is true, and the woman seems excited and wants to know more, and like...This isn’t life, right? Like, people don’t just live like this. 

Between the entrée and dessert, she gets up to use the washroom and hopefully find another cocktail, and as she’s walking past the kitchen, someone comes up beside her and puts a hand on her hip, and she startles a little, then laughs at herself when she sees that it’s Harry. Because who else would it be, she realizes too late.

“Hi,” she says, and is very aware, when he moves to stand in front of her, hands on both her hips, that people are absolutely watching them. Him. Them together. (Him with her.) “This is…”

“No, wait,” he tells her, then stands back, looks her up and down in a way that makes her burn a little with desire for him, but also makes her face flush. “This is fucking...I’m…”

“Speechless?” she says, and it’s stupidly breathless when she meant for it to be a joke. 

Harry nods, eyes on her body. “You’re stunning. Jesus.”

“Stop.” He gives her a lopsided grin, and she thought all chefs were assholes when they were working, but he seems almost annoyingly calm. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Wasn’t gonna give up the opportunity to catch you. I’ve been watching you all night.”

Allie chews her lip a moment, but stops, not wanting to ruin her lipstick. “Is that why you put me so close to the kitchen?” He just blinks, so she knows that’s true. “Gimme a hint on what’s for dessert.”

“No,” he laughs, and like, okay, she knows part of the appeal of these things is that no one knows the menu until the plates come out. “I’m heading out in, like, an hour.” Her brow furrows. Doesn’t he have to stay all night? He shrugs. “I’m pretty much done. I’ll say a couple words, then it’s over for me.” She just nods. That makes sense, maybe. She knows he’s got this reputation as a bit of a party boy, but that isn’t him anymore. “Come with me.” 

His hands are still on her hips. People are still watching. She still wants to kiss him. 

“Okay.”

Dessert is a salted caramel and pecan pie, and Allie absolutely can’t stand knowing she’d mentioned, in passing, weeks and weeks ago, that pecan pie is her favourite. This isn’t about her; it’s just on theme for the night, or whatever. But still. 

She meets him downstairs like he’d asked, around the corner from the main entrance. He’s already there, the bag he carries his knives in between his feet as he waits. He smiles when he sees her, then leans in to kiss her, puts his arm around her, and they get into the car that’s waiting by the curb. 

He asks, “How was the pie?” with this irritatingly handsome smirk on his lips, and Allie thinks her earlier suspicion was wrong. That was for her. 

She kisses him hard in the back of the car and his hand is moving up her thigh and under her dress, groaning when he realizes she’s not exactly wearing anything underneath. The way he looks at her darkly when he pulls away has desire pooling in her stomach. 

When they get to his place, her hands are tugging at his clothes and she’s stepping out of her heels and then his lips are against her neck and she stops, shoves him just a little and watches the way he rubs his lips together like he’s tasting her on them, or something. 

“I really like you,” she blurts out, and he smiles slowly, which is attractive and not giving as much away as she’d like. “I...Don’t know how to do this with someone like you, but I just…” She sighs, puts her hands in her hair. Harry watches, then tilts his head like he likes what he sees, likes looking at her like this. “You should know that I don’t just want to keep sleeping with you. I like you.”

Harry steps closer again, right up in her space, reaches for her wrists and pulls them down, and then uses his hand to push her hair back behind her ear. 

“I like you,” he says, and it’s insane how much he didn’t say ‘too’. Like this is a standalone thing, liking her. Regardless of her feelings for him. It feels important to her. “A lot.” She tries not to smile too widely. He glances down at her again. “I swear to god, when I saw you in this dress, I...I just wanted to say fuck the party and leave with you.” She lets her eyes close. Why does this feel so big? “And not just because sex with you is just...so good.”

She’s feeling far too good about this conversation with him, and then says, “Maybe I should keep it on a while.” And his brow goes up, because he’s clearly thinking something that is absolutely not what she had in mind, and she rolls her eyes at him and presses a palm against his chest. “No. It’s a rental.”

He chuckles a little, looks at her lips and then draws her in close and she puts her arms around him, her hands against his back just above his pants. 

“Let’s make some tea. We can talk and I can keep looking at you.” 

Allie feels sexy and wanted, leans in and kisses him hotly, then pulls away, takes his hand and leads him deeper into his apartment.


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Girls can't never say they want it Girls can't never say how Girls can't never say they need it Girls can't never say now"

She thinks maybe she wants him from the second she meets him. She’s 17 and visiting her grandparents and her grandmother takes her shopping for a ‘suitable dress’ for this garden party and Allie cannot say no to any of it. She’d really love to, when she’s on the lawn in this pink summer dress she - thankfully - likes more than she expected to, and the sun is beating down and there’re all these wildly rich people mingling and being boring.

“Harry Bingham,” her grandmother says, introducing them, and Allie smiles politely, shakes his hand, watches his eyes travel up from her chest to her face. 

“Pleasure,” he says, and Allie feels herself blushing. Then she watches him notice that, too, and grin. Her grandmother walks off, saying something about leaving Allie in his hands, which makes her want to scream. “Are you here all summer?”

She’s distracted, watching his mouth, thinking about… She’s never had someone who looks like him look at her this way. 

He says her name. She peers up at him. 

“Sorry,” she says, then...god, he’s definitely noticed and understands the reason for her distraction. She takes a deep breath, forces a smile. “I’m here til Labour Day. My parents are spending the summer traveling.” 

He tilts his head slightly, gives her a smile. “Lucky for me, then.” 

She can feel the blush creep up her cheeks and down her chest. She knows he watches that, too. 

She could never be so bold as he is. 

He laughs a little, offers to get her a drink, and then returns with two cocktails and suggests they find somewhere in the shade because she looks flush. Allie sips her drink and honestly wishes she could excuse herself. 

No, that’s not it. She absolutely could excuse herself. But then Harry cups her elbow and leads her to a nearby table under the shade of a navy blue umbrella and pulls out her chair for her. He asks her where she’s from and where she goes to school. He puts her a little at ease with the mundane nature of the questions. Allie feels her shoulders release their tension and asks the same questions back to him. 

He pushes a hand through his hair at one point, catches her looking and chuckles at her again. 

Then he leans over, speaks right in her ear, his breath warm on her already tacky skin, and she clenches her fist when he says, “Do you wanna get out of here?”

She does. 

She’s glad she didn’t have to ask.

He doesn’t kiss her, not when they’re walking down the beach and not when it gets dark and not when they’re sitting on the end of her grandparents’ pier. 

She asks him why. 

He draws his index finger up the seam of her dress at her thigh, smirks in the moonlight, and says, “Because I know how bad you want me to.” 

Allie isn’t thinking at all when she leans over, closing the distance between them, and presses her lips against his. It’s not like she’s never kissed anyone before. Well, no. Fuck. That’s not true. She’s been kissed and responded. She thinks this is the first time she’s the one making the first move. 

Harry easily slips his hand into her hair and presses his tongue against her bottom lip, and Allie just...wants him.

… … …

She spends too much time thinking about him considering they didn’t exchange numbers or say they’d see one another. She wants to assume from one of those first comments that he actually wants to see her again, but now she isn’t sure. 

Her grandmother asks her about it over breakfast, when they’re eating on the terrace. Allie didn’t leave the property last night without telling her grandmother where she was going and with whom. Harry had been by her side, one hand in his pocket, answering with all the right words when her grandmother questioned him about things like timing and safety and not straying too far from the beach. Allie had flushed at that, too; it was clearly meant to discourage him from taking Allie to be alone in his own house. 

Anyway, Allie answers the questions simply. She says Harry is nice, and he made her laugh, and she thinks he’s smart and well-read. Her grandmother tells her about his family, things Allie couldn’t have known because he didn’t tell her. About his father and about his grandparents and their considerable wealth. Allie could have assumed, but…

He ends up in her foyer three days later, and she comes down the stairs when her grandfather calls to her, tells her she has a guest. Harry smiles like he’s happy to see her. She wishes she’d done something different with her hair; it’s just been left to dry and fall down her back. 

“Take you to lunch?” he asks, and Allie bites her bottom lip as she looks at him and nods her head. Her grandfather tells them to have fun. 

An hour later, Harry’s hand is on her thigh under the table at the restaurant, fingers slipping under the hem of her shorts there. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, setting her water glass down. 

He says, “Nothing,” and then laughs when she makes a face. “Do you like it?”

Allie’s eyes glance around the restaurant, but no one’s paying attention to them. There’s no reason for anyone to pay attention to them. And his touch is...it’s not innocent, per se. No, he’s definitely trying to do something, here. But they’re in public and it’s just her thigh and he’s stopped, anyway, now. 

“So what if I do?” she asks, eyes on his. He looks pleased with himself, but also slightly surprised that she’s said it out loud. “Would you have done it if you thought I wouldn’t like it?”

His brow furrows. “What? No,” he answers quickly. Feeling like she’s gotten one up on him, finally, she smiles and draws her own fingers across his shoulders. He’s watching her face. She thinks he likes this, too. “What are you doing?”

She laughs. She doesn’t think he realizes he’s just repeated her own question back to her. She thinks he’s distracted, that he wasn’t expecting him to be bold, or something like that. And she’s not, really. She’s touching him innocently over his clothes. Does he really think she’s such a prude or so innocent or whatever that there’s no way she’d do this? She kissed him first. Doesn’t he remember? 

She answers, “Whatever I want,” and it feels like a half truth. 

He gives her a smile, then pulls his hand away, which… 

He asks her what else she wants. 

She loses her nerve and says she wants to go find dessert somewhere else. 

Harry’s hand doesn’t touch her again until they’re leaving and he puts it on her back as she walks past him. She thinks he wants to, though. To touch her more. When he’s watching her eat her ice cream sandwich and lick cookie crumbs off her thumb, he clears his throat and then laughs at the look she gives him like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. 

He doesn’t kiss her when he drops her off at home. She wants to kiss him - and she thinks he knows that, too - but he just tells her he’ll text her and then starts walking back to his car. 

… … …

He tells her flat out he’s not going to touch her. 

So that’s annoying. 

It’s made more annoying by the fact they’re making out in the living room at his house when there’s no one else home, and his hands aren’t moving from her arms or her face or her waist. 

Maybe annoying isn’t the right word. Maybe frustrating is more appropriate. 

“Why not?” she asks, and sounds breathless, and Harry stops kissing her neck, pulls back and grins at her like he thinks she’s missed something entirely. 

Honestly, it’s kind of making her mad that he keeps acting like she’s some clueless, delicate flower. She’s not. She knows about sex, even if she’s never had it. She’s not prudish. She’s kissed people before and fooled around. She just feels weird about making moves and talking about things with words. Like, it feels uncomfortable to talk about it. She’d rather just do it. She’d rather he just keep pushing a little, and let her tell him to stop when he’s going too far. They’ve been hanging out for weeks, now, and this is the most they’ve done. Which feels insane, because she absolutely thinks he’s not the kind of guy who usually spends this much time just talking. Which is a thing they do a lot. They’ve got a banter she really kind of loves, and they tease each other, and she likes hanging out with him. 

She also just likes his hands on her, and she can feel how badly she wants him, and they’re alone, and...and…

“I want to,” he says, which is a freaking relief, honestly. Allie wets her lips and he swallows thickly. 

She slides her hand up his chest, which he seems to like. “So…” she draws out. 

He takes a deep breath when her fingers get to his neck, move across his skin until her hand is resting just below his hairline. 

“You’re like...sweet, and innocent, and I don’t want to corrupt you.” 

She lets out a laugh, does not quote Britney Spears, but wants to tell him she’s not some fucking delicate flower. 

Is she? 

“You can’t corrupt me,” she tells him, and apparently he finds that amusing, or something. Allie reaches up and unbuttons the top button of his shirt. It makes her feel so fucking nervous, honestly, and that would just prove his point if he noticed. “It’s not like I’ve lived my life locked in a tower.” Something about that must make things click for him, because he moves his hand, his fingers very deliberately slipping up under her shirt at her hip. It makes her smile. “I just...I don’t want to sound stupid.”

He looks confused. “Why would you sound stupid?”

She rolls her eyes. She wants to unbutton his shirt more. Maybe that’d make him stop talking and do something. 

But she does like that he’s making it sound as though there’s no way for her to talk about what she wants that wouldn’t be somehow good.

She bites her bottom lip and shrugs one shoulder, feels nervous, which is stupid, maybe. 

“Maybe I just haven’t learned how to make, like, ‘I want you’ sound hot.” 

He lets out a breath. His fingers press ever-so-slightly harder against her skin. “Are you sure about that?” he asks, then smiles, leans closer, his lips just above hers. “You should try it.” 

He makes things like that so hot. And if he can make that sound hot, maybe her saying objectively hotter things can’t sound as bad as she thinks they will. 

She looks into his eyes, says, “Touch me,” which he clearly wasn’t expecting. His reaction is to let out this really sexy kind of moan thing. Then she adds, “Harry,” and he lets out a curse and pushes her onto her back on the sofa. 

A while later, when he’s got his hand slipped into her shorts and she lets out a breath that is unintentional but even she thinks sounds sexy, he asks, “Like this?” and she doesn’t hesitate at all when she asks him for more.

… … …

She doesn’t see him the next summer, or the summer after that. She does see his mother, who tells Allie he’s off at Georgetown, studying and spending his summer interning at some place she wrongly assumes Allie’s heard of. Allie’s at NYU now, which garners her looks of disapproval from the people her grandparents know in their summer community. Allie just doesn’t really care, honestly. It’s never been her dream to go to an Ivy, and her grandparents are footing the bill for her education regardless. They’re not bothered and are letting her stay at their apartment in New York, too. Cassandra’s off at Yale, and is here for the week to spend time with their grandparents. She never told her sister about Harry and that summer. 

She says he’s just some guy, when Cassandra asks. That feels like a lie. 

She has too much gin at some stupid party his mother hosts at the end of July, texts him late at night on the off chance his number is the same. She just tells him it would've been fun if he’d been here this summer, too. He doesn’t reply. 

… … …

The summer after that, though, she’s walking through town with her sunglasses on and a dress over her bikini and he drives past, slows to a stop and leans his arm on the edge of the window. He smiles up at her, and he looks better than he did even at 18, and she rolls her eyes and grins when really all she wants to do is tell him to stop looking at her like that.

That’s not all she wants.

“Well, well,” he says, looking her up and down again. Allie steps closer to his car and leans down, which makes him look a little too satisfied with himself. “Want a ride?”

It’s an absolutely insane thought, but what comes to mind is how that would’ve made her blush that first summer. Because he’s maybe referring to one of their last nights together, well after they’d slept together the first time - after she’d let him be her first - when she’d pushed at his shoulders and said, “Let me ride you,” and he’d had to tell her to wait because he thought it was so hot.

She feels crazy for being able to remember that.

She also feels a very strong urge to show him how much she’s changed since then. How much less shy she’s gotten. How a lot of that is really a direct result of her time spent with Harry. Because he encouraged her, spurred her on even, when she was holding back. He never made her feel like anything she wanted or needed or said was bad or silly or wrong. 

Not two hours later, he’s pressing her against the wall inside the door to his house, telling her he’s here alone for the summer. His lips are on her neck as she pushes her bikini bottoms down her legs and he unbuttons and unzips his pants. 

This is really stupid. She puts her legs around his hips anyway. 

After, when she’s adjusting her dress and watching him push his hands through his hair, she can’t help thinking about how hot he is, how they’re both here all summer again, how she feels like she has something to prove, stupidly. That she’s not as inexperienced as before. That she knows what she wants. 

She slips her feet back into her flip flops and says, “Same time tomorrow?” and his mouth opens in surprise, but quickly shifts to a smile. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and she’s always thought he looked really sexy with his cheeks flushed like that. 

She shrugs her shoulders and rubs her lips together, wishing she’d brought lip balm with her, or something. 

“You know where to find me.” 

He just laughs and she finds she likes that sound. When she reaches for the door to leave, he catches her by the elbow and pulls, his hand moving easily into her hair again as he kisses her. 

“How about now?” he asks, voice low, just for her. 

She smiles against his mouth, puts her hands on his waist to pull him closer. “Or now,” she says, and Harry moves them towards the stairs. “Now works.”

He nods quickly before kissing her again.


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: Stuck together for a long period of time & “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

Most of her colleagues on this campaign have gotten used to sleeping on the bus. Allie’s always battled shitty sleep patterns, and can hardly ever sleep unless she’s lying down, and it’s cool, and completely dark. Sitting upright on a coach bus driving through the heartland, or whatever, with 20 other staffers is…

“Here,” he says, extending a cup of tea. She doesn’t know where he got it, but she doesn’t much care. 

No, she does not want to consider that maybe her caffeine intake is related to her inability to sleep. She drinks the same amount when they stay over in towns and cities overnight and sleeps like a baby.

“Thanks.”

She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t think he particularly likes her, either. They butt heads at every meeting and she doesn’t like the way he can’t make his face not betray his every judgment and reaction. And she doesn’t think he likes that she’s strong-willed, and better liked by the candidate than he is, and that their boss seems to trust her with more. 

But Harry’s often the only other one awake on nights like this, and she thinks, genuinely, that neither of them really likes to be alone.

“May I?” he asks, gesturing to the seat next to her. 

Her laptop is closed and sitting there, but she grabs it and moves it, nods at him so he can sit down. He lets out a long, slow breath and leans his head back against the seat. He’s holding a cup of coffee, too, and Allie...He’s attractive. He’s very attractive. Everyone talks about it. Sometimes behind his back, but sometimes right to his face. She can’t decide which she thinks is worse.

“What a day, right?” she says, because she doesn’t like the silence. His eyes are still closed, but he lets out this small laugh and turns, head still leaning against the seat. He smiles a bit and Allie just watches. 

“That’s a pretty casual way to talk about the shitshow.”

She laughs, too, plays with the edge of the lid of her cup. Shitshow is an apt descriptor. Allie’s trying to stop turning things over in her mind so much. Harry takes a deep breath, so she takes one, too. It makes him smile again. She kind of…

Whatever. She likes being the reason he smiles. Which is interesting, because she really, genuinely, doesn’t totally like him. 

“How far til Missoula?” 

“12 hours,” he tells her, and she closes her eyes. She thinks she knew that. She definitely read it somewhere. She just blocked it from her mind. She leans her head back and ignores her phone when it vibrates where she’s got it sitting on her thigh. “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.” 

She smiles before she looks at him. She doesn’t know why. Maybe because what she was thinking was that she wanted a gin and tonic, a hotel bed, and an orgasm. She can’t tell him that, can she? 

But he’s just sitting there watching her, his face sort of painted blue with the dim lighting. His eyes are soft, the way they usually are when they seek each other out on trips like these. And Allie thinks she’s fucking kidding herself saying she doesn’t like him. The thing is she doesn’t _know_ him. And most of the time, she thinks she’d like to. If it made any sense at all to even consider shit like that. They’re colleagues, and they live on this bus half the time and will until November, and their schedules are insane. 

She says, “I can’t tell you,” and knows she’s flirting, being coy. 

He smiles at her like he knows this, and likes it. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, smug. 

Allie takes the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth. He’s staring, a little. That makes her bold. “If I told you, it’d change things.”

He thinks about it a second, then replies, “Sometimes change can be good,” and she definitely thinks that’s some kind of innuendo on what it might be like if they ended up in bed together.

She takes another deep breath, then takes a chance. She shifts in her seat, moves closer to him and leans her head on his shoulder. They’ve never really been this close. Except that one time at that community centre when this lovely woman had set out a breakfast buffet for them and Allie had reached across his body to grab a muffin and accidentally brushed against him. He’d just stared at her a second and then cleared his throat and walked away. 

“What’re you thinking?” she asks. 

She feels the rumble of his laughter and can see the way he flattens his hand on his thigh and moves it towards his knee. It’s weirdly attractive. 

“I mean...I can’t tell you now, either.” 

Yeah, she definitely knows what that means. He’s thinking what she’s thinking. And he’s thinking it because she started it.


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: roommates & "If I kissed you right now, what would you do?"

He learns about the room for rent through Sam. Allie’s Sam’s cousin, apparently. She’s a junior at NYU studying business. 

He’s in his last year of undergrad at Columbia. He’s not ready yet to consider it might have to be his last year over all. He’s not really ready to consider that even if he doesn’t know how the fuck he’s gonna pay for anything more.

He didn’t think his mom was serious about cutting him off. He figured he’d just call her bluff, like he did every other time. Until his landlord asked if she could start showing his place because he was moving out on the 30th, because his mom terminated his lease.

“Harry?” Allie asks when he shows up to look at this room she’s got available. He nods. She lets him in. 

The whole apartment would fit twice into his current place. But it’s nice and she seems to keep it clean. She says something about how she’s looking for someone quiet. 

“I basically just study and sleep,” he tells her. It’s not entirely true, but he figures his going out once every couple weeks or whatever isn’t going to be an issue for her either. 

She shrugs, leans her shoulder on the door frame to this empty bedroom. “Room’s yours if you want it. Rent’s due on the 15th.”

-

The first time he cooks for her, he’s craving pomodoro and she happens to be home.

She’s a shit cook. Rather, she never does it and when she does, it’s like, eggs and toast and bacon. Harry’s got a few staples. None of them are particularly hard. 

“What’s that smell?” she asks when she emerges from her bedroom. She’s wearing these sweatpants low on her hips, and a crop top. 

He likes how she looks. He doesn’t let himself look often. They’ve only been living together a month and their schedules are weird. It’s not hard not to think about her. 

Usually.

“Dinner?” he says, and it’s like a suggestion or an invitation or something. 

She says she’ll go get wine, and then comes back 45 minutes later with wine, a little bundle of carnations, a baguette, and two slices of cheesecake. 

They still don’t talk much when they’re eating in their little living room with its massive sectional and coffee table that's too big for the space. She asks if he wants to watch Bake Off. And he doesn’t, but he shrugs and she puts it on. 

By the end of the third episode, they’re talking about who they think should win. He can tell she’s a little drunk and he definitely sees the fabric of her bra when she stretches her arms over her head to pull her hair up. 

He looks away before she notices. 

-

He tells his mom to fuck off when she calls him on his birthday just so she can be a petty bitch and ask what he’s doing to pay rent. 

He didn’t realize his door was open. Allie stops in the hallway and looks at him just after he’s tossed his phone onto his bed and run his fingers through his hair. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. 

And that’s the moment he realizes she probably knows the whole situation from Sam. Harry hasn’t really told her. 

“Yeah.”

She kind of smiles, crosses her arms. “You’re a shitty liar.”

It almost pisses him off. It would, for sure, if he didn’t realize the only reason it annoys him is that he’s already stressed. 

“Sorry.” He sits down on his bed, and she comes in without being invited. Which he doesn’t care about. It’s just never happened before. She sits down next to him. She’s staring. “It’s my birthday.”

“What?” she breathes, almost a laugh. Then she reaches over with both hands and puts them on his shoulder, shoves and pulls him back and forth a couple times. It makes him laugh. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Honestly, he just feels like shit. Telling Allie, who’s just this side of being a total stranger felt...really weird. Sad.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes it is,” she says, and there’s really no room to argue. She stands up, puts her hands on her hips. “Let’s go out.”

“No, I…” She grabs his hand and pulls, which makes him shut up and also stand up so he’s in front of her. Looking down at her this way...She’s just really pretty. 

“You can pick what I wear. My gift to you.”

He laughs, asks, “How’s that a gift to me?”

He knows the answer. He still likes the look she gives him over her shoulder as she leaves his room. 

He follows. 

-

She starts bringing him coffee on Wednesdays when she gets back from her morning class and before he goes to the class he’s now TAing. 

She stops wearing a bra around the place when she’s in for the evening. 

He starts spending more time in the living room when they’re both home. 

He stops acting like the only time he wants to interact with her is to tell her he’s transferred her the rent money. 

-

It’s her idea to go to this pizza place in Dumbo. It’s also her idea to walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Neither of them were smart enough to check the weather. They’re not even halfway across when it starts pouring. Allie laughs, looks at him like she’s not sure how he’s going to react. There’s really nothing he can do but keep walking, so that’s what he does. 

He can’t stand the feeling of his feet wet in his shoes. Allie’s hair is soaked and falling down her back. She wipes under her eyes to get her makeup off. He tells her where she’s missed some. 

She looks incredibly hot. Harry puts his hands in his pockets in hopes that’ll help him resist temptation.

She loops her arm through his and shivers, tells him she’s freezing. He opens the cab door for her as soon as they’re in Manhattan. He tries not to stare. 

-

During finals, their paths barely cross, honestly. He cooks big batches of things and leaves notes for her on the chalkboard by the door to let her know there’s food. She brews pots of coffee in the morning when she’s up before him. 

He’s almost asleep one night when he thinks he hears her crying, and then she’s giving herself a pep talk, saying, “You can do this,” and doing some breathing thing she must think helps. 

He comes home once and she’s asleep on the sofa in the living room, looking kind of fucking adorable with her face pressed against the pillow like that. 

He puts a blanket over her. She freaks out later when she says she should’ve been studying and he should’ve woken her. He just really didn’t have the heart to. Which makes him realize he’s got some really fucking inconvenient feelings.

-

She’s packing to go home for the holidays. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, not anymore, so he’s staying in the city. 

He leans against her doorframe and watches her fold things and put them into her bag. She’ll only be gone like, two weeks, but he...Honestly, he doesn’t want her to go. And not because he doesn’t want to be alone. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” he says, and his heart is racing a bit, because they don’t do this. They don’t really talk about it. They...they sit closer on the couch now than they used to, and one night she fell asleep in his bed when they were watching an old movie he promised her she’d like. 

She got him a navy blue throw blanket for Christmas, because she sort of stole the one he had on his bed because she liked the way it felt against her skin. Which...Yeah. He’s got thoughts about that. 

She’s smiling when she turns to face him. But not a big smile. A sort of gentle thing he’s only recently started to see. Honestly, he’s not too stupid to know that must mean something. 

“You could still come,” she tells him. He just chuckles. She’d been dead serious when she invited him - talked to her mom and everything - but he feels weird about it. He shakes his head, steps into the room. “You shouldn’t have to be alone.” 

He shrugs. “Not much different from any other holiday, really.” Allie looks at him like that makes her sad. “I’ll just be here instead of in that house.” 

She hesitates, just looking at him, and then nods. She knows he hates going to his mom’s. Not that that’s an option this year. He wasn’t invited. His mom hasn’t reached out to him since his birthday. He hasn’t wanted her to.

Allie takes a breath and then says, quietly, “I’m gonna miss you, too.” 

Harry’s so close to her now that he pushes her hair off her face. She’s got it in a ponytail but he can tell she’s taken it down and redone it a few times by how many flyaways she has. This is not normal shit to notice about someone. It definitely means something that he knows all this about her. And not just because she’s his roommate. He _looks_. He’s looking. 

Allie’s not bothered that he’s touched her, either. Not that he’s surprised by that. She actually squares her shoulders to his so they’re standing face to face and he just…

“If I kissed you right now, what would you do?”

She smiles, leans closer to him, and then seems to try to reel it back in, hide how much she likes that he just said that, that he’s just going for it. 

“Well, I don’t know,” she says, her voice all full of cheek and sass and he just…

He sets his hand on her face and presses his lips to hers. She pulls him closer almost immediately. She makes a little sound when he pulls away and looks down at her. Her eyes are still closed. Harry smiles.


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: seeing each other for the first time in a while & "I wish I never met you."

She knows she locked her door before leaving for work today. Because she forgot something and was going to be late, and considered not bothering with all three locks and then knew she shouldn’t be stupid and leave her place anything less than as secure as possible.

So when she puts the key in and turns it and it’s already unlocked, she feels her heart start racing. She pauses, and leans down quietly, pulls the knife out of its sheath at her ankle, and pushes the door open.

She knows it’s him immediately, because he’s left his jacket hung on one of the hooks. And no one else she knows would wear a wool coat like that.

She turns the corner into the living room and he’s sitting there with the book she’s been reading in his hands.

He looks good. He always looks good, but he looks really fucking good.

Her heart’s still racing. Stutters a little when he glances up at her, finally, and god, he almost looks happy to see her.

“How did you get in?” He laughs like she’s naive for thinking three locks would be difficult for him at all. When he stands, she notices he’s not wearing his holster. He’s come here unarmed. That’s a first. “Well, how did you know where I live?”

She’s moved since they last saw one another. The last big job she did - well, the second last now, she supposes - meant she could help out her parents and also move to a place outside the city.

“Don’t ask questions you know the answers to,” he tells her, which is fair, really. He’s with the fucking FBI. He’s probably known for ages. He slips his hands into his pockets and looks her up and down. “You look good, Allie.”

She clenches her teeth. She’s not going to compliment him.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. If it were three years ago, maybe it’d be different. Maybe there wouldn’t be so much space between them. God, she would’ve come in and pressed herself all up against him.

She sets her knife down on the coffee table. Harry laughs. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it. But he’s got to know that it means something for her to leave it. For them both to be unarmed. Even if she doesn’t know why he’s here - even if she can guess - she’s not going to put up any kind of fight.

“I should be arresting you.”

She rolls her eyes, scoffs. “Yeah, well obviously you’re not. So.” He sighs, licks his lips, and she...Really, if things were different, she thinks maybe they would’ve had a real shot.

“You’re not even gonna deny it?” he asks, and he sounds bothered, but also a little amused. Which makes sense. That’s sort of how she’s feeling, herself.

She honestly never thought she’d see him again, not after last time. Not after that night in that hotel room in Boston when they’d agreed they shouldn’t, and then he’d undressed her slowly, deliberately, and pressed his lips right against her skin when he told her it made him fucking crazy that he thought she was perfect for him. That he thought he could do something stupid like fall in love with her. That he couldn’t let himself.

“Deny what?”

She’s sure as fuck not going to _confess_.

They both know she did it. He knows her too well to think it’d be anyone but her. She thought she’d taken that into account when planning the heist, but clearly she underestimated him. Or underestimated how well they got to know each other.

Harry just laughs, steps towards her like he’s about to leave. He moves past her without looking, and she just...She doesn’t want him to go.

“What was this, then?” she asks, and he stops as she looks at his back. It takes him a moment before he hangs his head.

She steps closer to him and he turns around, which makes for too little space between them. He’s looking down at her, and she’s looking up at him, and if she were feeling really bold, she’d kiss him. She wants to. She just can’t make herself do it.

“This was a warning,” he nearly whispers. It makes her nervous, which is unusual for her. “No one else has figured it out yet.”

It’s truly the best illustration of how fucked up their whole history is that she’s a little touched he hasn’t given her up yet.

Then he looks down at her throat, grins and reaches up, slips his finger under the chain she’s wearing and moves it down until the diamond pendant she’s wearing is resting right there against his fingertips.

“This is nice,” he says, then meets her eyes again. He knows good and well the diamond is a souvenir from one of her jobs. She can tell.

Allie reaches up, sets her hand on his wrist. “It was a gift.” He hums like he knows that’s not true, smiles, then lets his hand fall. She keeps hold of him. “How much time do I have?”

He shrugs, looks down, and then takes her hand in his, moves his thumb over her knuckles. “It’s hard to say.”

That’s really not fucking helpful. She feels like she could cry. Because she doesn’t want to get caught, obviously, but also because she wants him so badly and it’s clear she can’t have him. It’s been clear for years. Every time their paths would cross. Except that last time. When she got a taste of what it might be like. It’s almost enough to make her give it all up. She’s just too stubborn for that.

Her voice sounds a little choked when she asks, “Why are you doing this?”

He hesitates, tilts his head a little like it should be obvious and he’s bothered that it’s not.

But then he just leans down, presses a kiss to her cheek. She hates the way she leans up to receive it, wants more as he pulls away.

“Because,” is all he says, but then he looks into her eyes again and sighs, frustrated, maybe with himself. “I wish I never met you.”

Allie feels the tears in her eyes, and god, she wishes this wasn’t her reaction. She wishes that didn’t hurt so fucking much. She doesn’t even think he’s trying to be mean.

“Harry,” she breathes.

He squeezes her hand, then lets it go. He smiles like he knows she’s fine without him, that she’ll be fine without him. And a little bit, maybe, like he knows once she’s got more time to think about what he’s said, she might understand why he feels that way.

“I have to go.” She nods too quickly, which’ll give her away. She doesn’t want him to leave. He looks past her, points at the seat he stood from when she walked in, the chair he set her book down on. “That’s a good book.”

She’s confused. He just gives her a little smile and heads for the door. She locks it behind him and presses her forehead against the wood, wishing she didn’t feel so fucking awful.

But Harry doesn’t do things for no reason, and so she goes directly to the book and picks it up. Stuck there between the pages is a Canadian passport with her photograph and an alias.

When she looks out the window to see if he’s still within sight, he’s not. It’s a good thing. She might’ve asked him to come with her, wherever she decides to go. Which is just a truly awful idea.

He might’ve said yes.


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: One is recovering from a wound/illness & “They’re wrong about you.”

It takes him longer to come around this time, even with her there to cast a healing spell. She’s heard that sometimes as his kind ages they are prone to this kind of thing. Slow healing, extreme fatigue, mental health issues. 

Allie’s having a hard time imagining him as anything but exactly what he is to her. Strong. Handsome. Invincible. 

She’d told his staff to leave them, but now it’s been two hours of her sitting here by his bedside, watching the blood seeping through his bandage as he rests. Sleeps. While she waits for him to regain consciousness. Even after he’d fed, his eyes didn’t open.

In truth, she’s fucking terrified he won’t wake up. Managing her emotions when it comes to him is always the hardest thing in her life. Two years apart didn’t change that. Two years apart now seems like far too long, and she’s regretting telling him she couldn’t deal with the way she felt about him, and that she needed space. 

He sucks in a deep breath, and for the first time in two years, she feels alive again. She puts her hand on his cheek as he wakes, his eyes opening and looking right at her. 

She’s been in love with him since she was 19. From the moment she met him. And all the prophecies predicted it. The two of them. Together. Forever. The forever bit scares her, because she’s mortal even if he’s not. If the prophecies are correct - and she has no reason to believe they’re not - at some point that changes. She becomes immortal, too. She won’t lie and say she hasn’t tried to find an immortality spell. She’s just been unsuccessful. 

“Allie,” he breathes, and then his eyes close again, stay that way, and she’s been looking at his face like this for far too long and wants to see him, to know he’s not dying. “I knew you’d come.”

She shouldn’t smile. It’s messed up that she smiles. It’s just...it reminds her of five years ago, in Scotland, when he’d told her that he could always sense when she was around, that the need for her got stronger and stronger the closer she got to him. She thinks that’s the craziest thing for both of them. They’ve each been in love. They’ve each had relationships. But this thing they have for each other - the way they love each other - is something else entirely. It’s impossible to forget, and it’s consuming, and there’s nothing else - no one else - that could break it or get in the way. The only way they can pause anything is by putting physical space between them. Usually an ocean. Because he stays here, in Italy, and she lives in America, and that’s usually enough. Not that she doesn’t feel when he’s hurting, or he doesn’t feel when she uses her magic. All that always remains. 

And the whole reason she flew to Europe in the first place is because of a premonition about him getting hurt. Arriving just in time to see the knife enter his chest, she could’ve done without. 

“Where else would I be?” she asks, leans closer to him, presses her lips to his knuckles. It makes him let out a small laugh. “What happened?”

She’s asked the others, the other vampires who live here with him on the compound. They’ve all told varying tales of this guy who came in from somewhere in California and challenged Harry for his position leading the group of them, or something. She doesn’t pretend to know everything about the hierarchy. She’s certainly learned enough to have a basic understanding. 

And even though he was stabbed centimeters away from his heart, he still defeated his opponent. Allie’s gotten a little better at witnessing that kind of thing, too. 

“Everybody wants to rule the world.”

She scoffs, but loves the stupid grin on his face because he thinks he really did something there with his outdated reference. It’s so fucking endearing she almost wants to just climb into bed with him. 

“Harry.” He opens his eyes, looks at her, seems so happy she’s here. She’s happy she’s here, too. “Was this all about me?”

It’s what she wants to know, and she doesn’t want to pretend she hasn’t been sitting here for hours mulling it over. She wants the truth. She knows he’ll give it to her, even when no one else will. 

“They said your magic can’t be trusted,” he tells her. It’s not the first time she’s heard that, either. God, sometimes she feels it, herself. “They said you’ll betray me.” 

She looks down, the dirt on her boots from the madness outside earlier, and… God, it makes her crazy how these feelings she has with him are so strong. Stronger than anywhere else. Her magic is tied to him, somehow. So much of her power is drawn directly from him, and she can feel it when she’s near him, when they’re touching. The idea that she could betray that, that she ever would - honestly, that she’d even know how - it makes her want to scream. It makes her want to destroy something. 

Harry’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “They’re wrong about you.” 

She moves closer, the legs of her chair scraping against the hardwood, and she places her hand over the bandage on his chest. 

“I’d never,” she says. God, when she’s around him, the only thing she feels positive of is that it’s the two of them against everything. She can’t stand the thought that his connection to her caused him harm and put him in danger. 

He leans up, his lips pressing against her forehead. She feels tears in her eyes. 

He murmurs, “Then stay,” and Allie wants to say yes. She wants to tell him she won’t leave again. And she could do it. Good things happen when she follows her instincts with him. And he’s been trying to get her to stay for years. 

She pulls back, looks at his chest, feels her hand warming as she channels her magic to make him feel better. She lets her hand hover over his bandage, closes her eyes, and hears him let out a sound as she works. 

She knows this will keep happening. The people who don’t want them together - don’t want their power in the universe - will continue to show up and challenge them. Allie’s just tired of pretending they aren’t safer together. 

She says, “Move over,” and Harry smiles because he knows she’s agreeing, knows she’s not going anywhere. 

His body’s been cool to the touch since she met him. It still makes her feel warm all over to lie down next to him in his bed and feel the power that flows through her when they touch.


End file.
